


des autels pour chaque dieu (altars for every god)

by Cymbidia



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Anal Sex, Bad Poetry, Blow Jobs, Canon Era, Deepthroating, Gratuitously and Intentionally Bad Puns, Group Sex, Humor, Les Amis de l'ABC Shenanigans, M/M, Orgy, Pegging, Penis In Vagina Sex, Platonic Sex, Poetry reading, Smut, Sorry for flooding the relationship tags but I have no idea how else to tag an orgy fic, The sex doesn't happen until 16k in, Trans Grantaire, Trans Male Character, Virgin Enjolras, drunken libertine orgies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:00:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29581317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Cymbidia
Summary: Courfeyrac writes a volume of horrible erotic poetry. The Amis pile into Enjolras' lodgings for an impromptu poetry reading and orgy. Enjolras thoroughly loses his virginity.Transmasc!Grantaire-centric.
Relationships: Bahorel/Combeferre/Courfeyrac/Enjolras/Feuilly/Grantaire/Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Jean Prouvaire, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Les Amis de l'ABC, Grantaire & Les Amis de l'ABC, Grantaire/Joly/Bossuet Laigle, Grantaire/Les Amis de l'ABC
Comments: 24
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hugo's 1823 poem 'À mes amis', from the collection Odes et Ballades.
> 
>  **Content warnings:** While I don't delve too deep into The Nitty Gritty of Grantaire's experiences of being trans in the 19th century, there's a few brief instances of period typical ways of thinking about and referring to Grantaire being trans, though nothing that is meant to be negative or hurtful. It is mostly a matter of terminology and period typical understandings of sex and gender. Mouse over for more detailed warnings, to avoid spoilers:  
>  **Mildly spoilery detail** and **How I refer to his body**  
>  Also, lots of period typical and Grantaire typical drinking. And some Extremely on purpose bad erotic poetry.  
> If you would like more detailed warnings, or if you think there's something important I missed in the warnings, let me know in the comments.

Grantaire couldn't bear the thought of it, his cold body laid out with those of his friends, all in a neat row, and the police would come, and perhaps someone would wash him before he was to be buried, and perhaps some wily old pickpocket or some little street gamin would try to help themselves to what was in his inner pockets, pat down his cold body, and there. The discovery. Even long after he was gone, he wanted no discovery. It would be an incorrect discovery anyhow, and as productive for the furtherment of truth as heliocentrism was for the furthering of astronomy. And what would it all be for? Nothing. Another Napoleon, another Restoration.

He hadn't quite figured out how he was going to die without leaving a body behind yet, but he wouldn't throw himself upon a barricade that would inevitably fall. His years peering at sensationalist newspapers and flinging paint at a canvas had taught him too well how closely a corpse upon the barricade might be scrutinised, for the sake of a crude sketch or of a hideously detailed painting. It would not be any of his friends who collected the body, and any discovery someone might erringly make would surely be one last misunderstanding from a world that always cruelly misunderstood Grantaire.

It was not enough that Grantaire was broad and extraordinarily homely, that he boxed and attempted to womanise, despite his natural disadvantage of ugliness, that he kept himself scrupulously free of masculine company, when he resorted to hired companionship and official dalliances. He had the slightest suggestion of softness at his middle from the incessant wine and cakes and from sitting all day at his easel, for all that he boxed and danced and ruled supreme in singlestick. What in another man was the natural soft shape of a torso would, on him, appear to simply be roundness of a more inviting kind, the roundness of a belly that leads into a valley rather than a peak. The little fat tits of other men puffed from rotundity and excess, and drooped in shame. His small breasts were not entirely justifiable with the excuse of weight, given his strong corded muscles and the sleek lines of his body, but they were small enough to be ignored all the same.

He had the arms of a painter and a fighter, not a baker or a laundress. He took extreme pains in the exercise of his shoulders and the tailoring of his clothes that it was so. Though he was not a dandy like Bahorel or Courfeyrac, he went about daily in the undergarments of one, with a man's corset under his waistcoat to help shape his figure, drawing in the gut and minimising the hips. He would rather be called homely and "that hideous fellow" a hundred thousand times before hearing someone label him, a strapping young lad who was the very definition of a drunken sophist reprobate, matronly. He was not so tall for a man. He was almost a brute, had he been only a hint uglier or a smidgen broader. Of his friends amongst Les Amis de l’ABC, he was the only one did not invite suspicion of inversion or deviancy at the first look, for he looked like the only crisis of sexuality that he ever experienced was when his pockets were empty and no one would tolerate his ugliness without payment. Gilded Enjolras and too dandyish Courfeyrac would have been under investigation immediately under older laws, to say nothing of blushing Prouvaire and affectionate Feuilly. And there was Bahorel, whose waistcoats spoke for themselves, and the entwined pair of Joly-and-Bossuet, who needed no explanation. Intense bookish Combeferre should have been beyond reproach, but his boyish enthusiasm for his eclectic interests lent something of the boarding school to his scholarly air, and the irrepressible depths of his broad love of humanity implied something of the friar in both vice and virtue. Even that friend of Courfeyrac that Combeferre had chased off before, the handsome little Abbé Pontmercy, blushed easily like a maiden or a coquette when he was not busy being a filthy Buonapartist. No, Grantaire was masculine beyond reproach, the default kind of masculinity, the unappealing kind that faded into the background. It would never be an object of anybody's interest except his lovers, unless he was ever exposed.

Perhaps he ought to stay away, for his own sake. Perhaps he ought to stay away, for the sake of his friends. Perhaps he ought to stay away because no women were permitted in the back room where Les Amis met. He was not a woman, but he doubted Enjolras would care about the distinction.

Still, there was something to be said, for the cheer and the wine, for the camaraderie. For the bright minds and clear voices speaking passionately and thoughtfully. The glow of his Achilles, his Alexander, his Apollo who disdained him so, but constituted the true magnetic north of his world, a world where he was but a simple spinning compass needle, drawn to a force of nature greater than he. It was impossible that he could ever turn aside from this bliss. Here was the only place where he was real. How could he be unmoved by the warm flickering glow of the lights, the creak of chairs, and the quiet passion of Enjolras engaged in practical work? How could he not laugh at the booing of his friends when Courfeyrac attempted to expound upon the thin booklet of his erotic poetry which he was attempting to commission his friend Pontmercy to translate into German and English, with minimal success?

"Will he not be joining us again?" Grantaire enquired mildly, balancing an empty wine bottle upside down by its mouth upon the tip of his forefinger.

Courfeyrac grinned weakly in the direction of Enjolras and Combeferre, who had paused in their murmured discussion of the logistics of distributing their next political pamphlet and looked over in interest.

"Not yet, I should think," Courfeyrac said, rather guiltily. "He can learn, I swear it, but perhaps his next lesson might wait a little."

"A shame," remarked Grantaire. "I had hoped to hear another dissenting voice in our midst, though — sorry Courfeyrac — the Bonapartism does ruin the relaxing ambiance of the room, and so sours my already sour wine."

At this, Enjolras gave Grantaire one of those intent, disdainful looks that always made Grantaire weak in the knees and wet between the legs. Before Grantaire could say something outrageous in order to keep hold of his attention, Enjolras turned back to Combeferre, and Grantaire deflated like a balloon run out of hot air.

An arm wrapped itself around Grantaire's shoulders. "Grantaire, my most capital fellow!" Bossuet said cheerfully. "Stay with me and Jolllly tonight."

Grantaire peered at him suspiciously. "Are the pair of you out of fair Musichetta's good graces again?" 

"Not at all, not at all!" Bossuet chortled. He overbalanced, having leaned too far in order to proposition Grantaire whilst still sitting down. Grantaire caught him and pulled Bossuet up with an ease of long practice that all his friends possessed.

"Simply missing your fine company, my dear," Bossuet continued, now standing at a haphazard angle, leaned as he was against the back of Grantaire's chair. "And," added he in a low voice, "you were giving Enjolras that look again." 

Grantaire inclined his head ruefully, caught.

In a louder voice, Bossuet continued. "Come pay a visit to Musichetta with me and Joly, and surely you will delight us all with some amazingly lewd feat of strength that would kill any weaker man, or at least cause him to throw his back out." Bossuet touched his back with a wince. It was largely recovered, but still twinged when he sat at his desk for too long.

Grantaire flexed his bicep and waggled an eyebrow suggestively. Bossuet let out a loud burst of laughter. Grantaire's extraordinarily homely face rendered any leer he made either a threat or a joke, even when Grantaire was ploughing someone into the mattress with incredible skill and genuine passion, so he never tried to look serious when he leered.

Meanwhile, some of the group had devolved into a tussle over the hideousness of Courfeyrac's poetry. Feuilly was attempting to beat Courfeyrac over the head with a piece of rolled up broadsheet. Bahorel restrained Courfeyrac's arms so he could not fight back. Jean Prouvaire climbed onto a chair next to the tussle, and began to read Courfeyrac's poems aloud with his low, gentle rumble, torn between affecting pretentiousness and laughing at his friend.

"Thy marble thighs, trembling like an earthquake," narrated Poet Prouvaire. "Thine nether eye weeping sweet limpid tears. O! What rouge dabbed thee 'pon those secret lips, that they — Ha! — That they— that—"

Jehan gave up his earnest attempt at an erotic purr, and dissolved into guffaws. Bahorel had to abandon Courfeyrac in order to catch Jehan before he fell off his chair. Even so, poor Bossuet caught an elbow in the ribs as Prouvaire righted himself.

"Sorry, dear Lesgle," Jehan said, giving Bossuet a gentle pat where he had been elbowed.

"No harm done," wheezed Bossuet. "This is what I get for prepositioning Grantaire when he's busy at the altar of his worship."

"Oh?" Jehan blushed in delight. "I am of a mind to kidnap Courfeyrac tonight and make him read his masterpiece aloud before he inflicts it upon Marius Pontmercy. Perhaps engage in a serious discussion on the erotics of poetry. Maybe you could all join me! We can have a poetic symposium! An orgy of words and flesh! Grantaire and Feuilly, you must really be there, poets are in such short supply within our group that you artists must make up the numbers. Courfeyrac needs all the help he can get. Especially with the anatomy, which both you artists and our medical friends have studied in such depth. And we need some ladies too!"

"Théo won't come, no point in asking her," Bahorel said from behind Jehan, glum. "Courfeyrac offended her most grievously last week. Something to do with the seamstress where he'd gotten his new shirts being her sworn enemy. I think she beat Théo in line at the printer shop a few too many times, or something of that sort, they do write for rival magazines. I daren't ask for more detail, I've never seen her glower at another woman so."

Courfeyrac, who was reciting his hideous poetry as he fenced paper batons with Feuilly, cringed dramatically at the name of Bahorel's usually laughing mistress, and was given a sound whack upon the shoulder for his moment of inattention.

Jehan tutted in sympathy. Then, spotting the end of Enjolras and Combeferre's discussion, and therefore the conclusion of the last official order of business of the night, he climbed back up again onto his chair.

"Republicans and libertines," he announced. His voice was low and soft, but all his friends had obligingly quieted themselves to listen. "I am kidnapping Courfeyrac for the rest of today and all of tomorrow for the sake of poetic and erotic edification. Anyone ready to sacrifice their fleshly shells upon the altar of literary advancement is invited, and do bring a lady friend! He has been too long without a mistress, and his anatomical metaphors have left behind the flowery limits of the yonic in favour of the geological and the grotesque. A daring artistic choice, perhaps, but poor Abbé Marius at least would appreciate some more realism, for the sake of his education, if not for the sake of his translations."

"I have not been too long without a mistress," protested Courfeyrac. "I have a different grisette upon my arm each week. I am inundated with perfumed envelopes. If I but beckoned — mmf mmmhh!" His self defense was cut short by Feuilly's hand clamping across his mouth.

"Georges is out doing something secret and seditious today," Feuilly said cheerfully, "but I shall bring myself, and stay til the end. I am tired of always leaving early, I intend to make the most of tomorrow being Sunday. Besides, I dabble enough in pornography in my work to have a vested interest in the honour of erotic art."

"Count me in!" Joly piped up from the secluded corner of the room where he had been huddled, doing something unfathomable with a lemon and a bottle of an unknown chemical that he had no doubt liberated from a university laboratory. He shoved the bottle into a pocket, and left the mangled lemon with the dirty cups for Louison. He sauntered up to the cluster of his friends and clapped Courfeyrac upon the back, before approaching Bossuet and putting an arm around his shoulders. 

"It had better be you extending the invitation to La Musichetta," said Bossuet with a rueful grin. "I'm worried she is still cross with me about the bonnet I crumpled this morning."

"She won't be cross about the bonnet anymore, my dear Bossuet," answered Joly, "on account of how I dropped by with a new one to replace it just before coming over. But she was quite determined to show it off, I'm afraid, and has gone out with her friends, and told me not to expect her back until Monday at the earliest. To tell you the truth, I think she may be joining Mademoiselle Georges in sedition."

Bossuet drooped, his bald head thumping against Joly's shoulder. In less than a second, he perked up again, and returned to optimism. "It is just as well that I did not succeed in seducing Grantaire to see her tonight then, if she will not be there for us to see!"

"Hmm! That leaves us with a great dearth of ladies, and that can't stand, for the sake of Courfeyrac's poetry!" Prouvaire protested. His gentle eyes glittered sadly, like a kicked puppy. His lips curved upwards, betraying him.

"Haven't you a lady friend, dear Jehan? What happened to pretty Jean-Marie?" Courfeyrac wanted to know.

Jehan emitted a sudden sob and threw himself into Grantaire's arms. "She became cross when I called her Marie-Jeanne by accident one too many times, and has completely broken with me." Jehan quavered prettily, perched upon Grantaire's lap. He rested his cheek on top of Grantaire's head, hiding his face in those unruly dark curls. Grantaire had to abandon his wine bottle in order to steady Prouvaire, who was a slippery armful of hideously coloured silks and wools. "She keeps changing it back and forth, and I failed to keep up. She won't have me back, at least not until she returns to something unhyphenated that I can be trusted with."

Grantaire laughed at his misfortune. "That's what you get for morphing your own name so, dear Je-han."

"Still," sulked Jehan. "Are we incapable of producing even a single feminine specimen for an orgy? This is not doing much for my reputation as a Romantic. Perhaps I ought to make everyone drink out of Victor, to make up the difference." Victor was the name of the skull which he had appropriated as a drinking vessel, in imitation of popular Romantic fashion. It was so named because of Jehan's particular enmity for Victor Hugo and the Cénacle.

"We could hire someone, I suppose," Grantaire suggested vaguely, trying to take a drink with Jehan obstructing his reach. Bossuet very kindly held a cup to his lips, and he took a swallow, then blew the man a kiss. He continued, "though I don't know how many of my acquaintances of that sort should be free for house calls on a Saturday night with such short notice."

"I am insulted that you discounted myself entirely from this reckoning," interjected Combeferre with a good humoured smile. He had made his way over with a stack of papers in one hand and a full bottle of crème de cassis in the other, brandished like a club. "Though you are correct to do so, I haven't a mistress to speak of, so I hope you shall accept this as my ticket of entry into your little poetic symposium."

Courfeyrac launched himself bodily at Combeferre. "My friend!" He cried in delight. "How good of you to come! I knew that I should count on you to be interested in all matters of refinement!"

Combeferre dodged his embrace neatly in order to set the bottle down on the table and to take a seat. Undeterred, Courfeyrac dropped into his lap and picked up his volume of poems again, and began to murmur them into Combeferre's ear. It was a testament to Combeferre's incredibly eclecticism of education, his endlessly broad horizons, his deep and abiding _agape_ for all mankind that stretched from the loftiest philosopher to the most wretched beggar, and perhaps of his less chaste love for Courfeyrac personally, that he simply raised an eyebrow at particularly atrocious parts, but never strayed from his expression of grave attentiveness, and certainly never stooped to laughing. He did fail, however, to repress his smile.

"Ah," said Combeferre, as Courfeyrac paused to turn a page. "I see now why Prouvaire has called such a symposium. Courfeyrac, my friend, if you wish to focus so much upon the visceral aspects of sexual congress, there is an upcoming public anatomy lecture which may be of interest to you."

"Courfeyrac does seem like he might benefit from a more accurate knowledge of the pleural cavity, in addition to the orifices of the body," Joly agreed. "Why, he seems to have invented whole new body parts unknown to modern medicine for the sake of Monsieur Pontmercy’s edification."

"All of my poems," Courfeyrac said with giggling dignity, "were based upon personal observation and first-hand experience."

"Perhaps what he really needs are a pair of spectacles," Feuilly suggested. He stole the volume out of Courfeyrac's hand, and began to peer at it with immense disgust.

"Fair Enjolras," called Grantaire, enjoying this particular spectacle slightly too much, "will you not join your comrades? Surely the championing of education and literacy, that purpose upon which this very society was founded, is a worthy cause for even you." He leered at Enjolras, the kind that was a threat rather than a joke.

Enjolras wrinkled his brow, and his lush bottom lip twisted into its customary expression of disdain. Grantaire forgot about the warm weight of Prouvaire in his lap, became deaf to the verbal scuffling between Feuilly and Courfeyrac, grew insensible to the bright laugh of Bahorel and Bossuet. All he knew was the wine fizzing in his blood, the thirst parching his body from his cracked lips all the way down to his bone dry guts, and the impending repudiation, which was sure to set him on fire with shame and delight. He shifted in anticipation, almost dislodging dear Prouvaire.

"Yes, I think I shall," agreed Enjolras, and gave Grantaire another inscrutable look of immense disgust.

Grantaire had already lined up his jibes and was about to launch into them. Then, he registered the affirmation. He sat there gaping, mouth working silently, wordless for perhaps the first time in his life.

"Enjolras!" Courfeyrac said delightedly, tackling him away from Grantaire. "Say it is true, that my sublime poetry and my lush sensuality has finally ensnared you, when no pretty grisette ever did."

Enjolras gave Courfeyrac a patient look of pity, before softening into a smile. "We have finished all our business for the evening," answered he. "And so I am free to carouse with my comrades. Is that truly so uncharacteristic?"

"You carouse with us, stern Aristogeiton, but even when you do, you are pure and ascetic. Like a lotus flower, you bloom in the mud but are not stained by it." Grantaire said with a coquettish pout that he knew looked ridiculous on his unlovely lips. "What happened to the chastity that you maintain so scrupulously for the sake of your only mistress, Marianne? Is Grantaire so beautiful that your resolve has broken at last?"

Grantaire batted his lashes at Enjolras. The effect, as with most of his attempts at flirtation, suited his homely visage as much as a lacy bonnet suited a muddy truffle-pig. In related fact, most of his mother's feeble attempts at dressing him as a girl child had ended up with him looking rather like a pig in a bonnet. It was why he got away with living as he did - the thought that Grantaire was not the ugliest maid born in Marseille but really just a somewhat misshapen young libertine lad was much easier upon the egos of M and Mme Grantaire, who already had heirs and mares enough to fulfil all their bourgeois aspirations of domestic bliss. When he declared his intent to be an artist, Madame Grantaire had muttered a prayer and beseeched him to attribute his uncomely looks to boozing and venereal sins. Only could a painter really justify looking so...abstract, so interesting, so full of character.

Enjolras swept Grantaire from head to toe with an assessing gaze. He then took a long but measured swallow from his cup. "It is not your lack of good looks that I take issue with," he said severely. "It is all the rest of your person. What care have I for the attractiveness of a face belonging to he who believes nothing? Should I stoop to sodomising you, I would find my prick being curdled by the wine and irony that have long since replaced all your organs. I have the measure of you, Grantaire. But still. It is not only you who I am consenting to try. I am not opposed to camaraderie and a little carousing with our friends. I would not have come, had anyone invited a woman, but as none have yet materialised, here I am, as chaste and scrupulous and stern as you find me. Perhaps by the end of tonight, I will be chaste no longer."

Grantaire was momentarily glad, for the first time in perhaps all his life, that he did not have a prick. The erection that this scathing speech might have inspired would probably have ripped the buttons clean off his trousers and possibly fractured Jehan's hip with the speed of its rise and the steel of its hardness. As it was, he was quivering in his seat, mouth parted like an idiot, suddenly throbbing and aching and panting and resisting the urge to squirm. The precise movement of the lips when Enjolras had enunciated "prick" and "sodomising" had undone Grantaire —— the movement of the tongue in the mouth and against the lips and teeth, the inhale and exhale of breath, the thought of the sound caressing Enjolras inside the throat and against the palate before being released to the air. The hauteur of his pronunciation, the judgement in his piercing eyes, the frowning angle of his lips. Grantaire buried his face in the ugly yellow ruffles of Jehan's shirt and moaned.

Prouvaire, who had been frozen as he bore witness to his exchange, patted Grantaire tentatively.

"Grantaire is not so bad, Enjolras," he said pleadingly, in nervous consideration of Grantaire's emotions. He had mistaken Grantaire's weak whimper of arousal for anger and despair. "He is a sceptic, yes, but he is also a loyal friend."

"Grantaire is so bad," said Grantaire, lifting his head and smiling at Jehan in reassurance. "Do not defend me falsely, dear Prouvaire, he hasn't said anything untrue."

Jehan shot each of them an anxious look, but before he could call the whole thing off after all, Grantaire displaced him from his lap and stood.

"My good fellows!" Grantaire bellowed to the room at large. "As sad as it is, eight handsome specimens such as ourselves could not scrounge up even a single girl between us to critique Courfeyrac’s poetic depiction of the feminine, and so our dear leader has consented to join us, now that he is reassured he shan't have to fend off any—" and here he gagged theatrically "—women. Rejoice! He walks among us, and is himself a fleshly man!"

Everyone here except Enjolras knew about the secret Grantaire hid in his stuffed trousers, and even Enjolras knew how Grantaire loved and worshipped him. Courfeyrac's mouth fell open. Joly winced with tender pity. Combeferre stared at him with such depth of concern that Grantaire almost came to his senses. But he was mildly drunk and wildly amorous, so he continued. "Who shall offer their lodgings for this most momentous of occasions? Not only shall we celebrate Courfeyrac for his poetry, today we shall have the pleasure of rectifying Enjolras his virginity!"

Bahorel and Bossuet clapped weakly when he paused for cheers. Grantaire studied the room, and found himself dissatisfied. He raised a bottle of wine to his lips, draining half of it in one draught. The expressions of alarm upon the faces of his friends were now mingled with faint, horrified fascination. Grantaire smirked at them.

"Thinkest thou, my good friends, that I am blind to your gawking and gaping? Have no fear! I am not a refined man, but I am not a brute! I may not always mind my manners at the table, I will admit to that myself, but let it never be said that I am discourteous in the bedchamber! Sweet Euryalus has set his terms, and I am satisfied that he shall run this race without me. Rapin is the masculine of rapine, but he only snatches and does not violate! Ugly as I am, I have never pressed my advances upon any who did not welcome it, whether I bartered for their company with friendship or with coin. Why, only cast your mind back, and every man in this room but one can stand as a character witness in the matter of my prowess and my gentility, and he who cannot has himself no interest in being despoiled by Grantaire anyhow! No, don't look so shocked, Enjolras, yes, all of them! You see now that your loyal fellows do not need to bring pretty grisettes in order to find distraction within this hallowed meeting hall. No, I am not the lewd exception, chaste Themis, but the rule. It was not I who corrupted our worshipful society with my lecherous ways, but the reverse. If you could believe it, I was as cold and virginal as you once, before I learned the embrace of our fellows! I am now always obliging to those I love, and I have so many fine fellows to spend my love upon. You need only beckon, and I shall open my legs, but I also open them easily enough for all my Amis. What does it matter that I worship only your finely arched feet? I pray to Apollo alone, but I kneel easily enough for all. I have my secular vices and my secular habits. You may be an ordained priest of Revolution and Republic, and be content to be cloistered in sanctitude, but I dedicate to you only your holy hours and your holy days, and outside of Mass at the Musain and Communion at the Corinthe I do sometimes stray. If you will not permit me communion with your flesh, then I must kneel elsewhere for my sacrament, and transubstantiate it into your body by faith alone. The flesh is always willing, Enjolras, and the spirit is so very weak."

Bossuet attempted to usher Grantaire back into his seat, but he was not to be deterred.

"You are full of nonsense," said Enjolras, with an almost-fatuous toss of his golden head. His lips were twisted again into that beloved expression of repudiation. "You say nothing and mean nothing, and in turn reveal nothing. And yet in your nothings, you reveal too much. How loose your tongue, Grantaire, and how clever. We shall go to my lodgings, for they are the most spacious, and you shall show me the limits of that tongue. I should like you to be silent and speechless for once."

Courfeyrac gasped in the background, as if he had witnessed a savage blow or a piglet take flight.

Grantaire blinked against the roaring in his ears. He raised up his half empty bottle of wine, and finished it at one go. "Not so afraid that your prick is going to pickle in my irony any more, are you? Why, is it my oratory or my passion, then, that moves you? Only tell me, murderous Orestes, and I shall endeavour to replicate it."

"Pickle in his irony...?" Feuilly, who had missed the opening volley whilst lambasting Courfeyrac's poetic pretensions, repeated in disbelief. "Is that an euphemism?" 

Joly spread his hands helplessly in answer.

"I'd like you to be quiet, and I'd like to shut you up myself. That is all."

Grantaire wondered dreamily what Enjolras might be shutting him up with. He could never quite imagine it as vividly as he wanted to. Enjolras seemed like he ought to have a fig leaf between his thighs, or a quiescent little marble thumb perched atop two neat plums, a vestige of the bestial that had been tamed and forgotten for more cerebral pursuits.

"I am beginning to suspect," said Courfeyrac to Prouvaire, "that we are not going to work on my poetry after all."

Prouvaire patted him with sympathy. "Perhaps you might like to meet some of my Romantic friends," he offered in consolation. "We often critique each other's work, erotic and otherwise."

"Do not come," warned grinning Bahorel, "without asking which graveyards we hold our poetry reading orgies in first."

Enjolras rolled his eyes and swept out of the room. The Amis followed as they always did. Of course they followed. Who among them did not worship Enjolras, did not desire him? Who among them did not love him as a friend, as a comrade, as the living avatar of the Republic to come? As a quiet and serious young man who loved and worshipped his friends tenderly; as a beautiful youth?

Grantaire maintained the rearguard out of a sense of coquetry, but he would not have been stopped from following Enjolras by all the armies besieging Troy.

As the group spilled out into streets burnished by the bright autumn dusk, Bahorel attempted to communicate to Grantaire, via a series of elaborate facial gestures, the foolishness of this whole endeavour. Grantaire ignored him with blithe good humour. He waved over one of the gamins who sometimes carried messages for the Amis, and gave him a couple of sous to run to Grantaire's lodgings and ask the porter to fetch from his room a certain padlocked wooden chest, which the gamin was to then bring to Enjolras' address forthwith in return for the promise of another ten sous.

Enjolras, in a vain but conscientious attempt to uphold Jehan's original plan, engaged Courfeyrac in discussion of his poetry. Feuilly permitted himself to be distracted from the theatrics of Grantaire and Enjolras, and was now exchanging gentle eviscerations of Courfeyrac with Prouvaire. Combeferre was making his own set of plaintive and pointed facial gestures at Enjolras, who was ignoring him just as soundly. Peaceably, Joly and Bossuet lingered by Grantaire, walking slowly enough that they were within easy reach, bracketing an empty space between them like an invitation. Grantaire's heart swelled with affection for his friends. He made half-facetious claims of worshipping Enjolras, but this was where his true faith lied, in the easy conversation and soft silence of friendship. He believed in nothing, but his friends filled his heart.

"Enjolras is going to be in for a surprise," Bossuet remarked neutrally. "Or are you not planning on taking your trousers off?"

"Ah, but you see, therein lies my clever plan," replied Grantaire, stepping in line between them allowing Joly and Bossuet to each take one of his elbows. Arms linked, they sauntered after the herd. "Maid Marianne thinks he shall send me to my knees and shut me up. So what! I shall stun him speechless in return. Turnabout is fair play."

Joly made a doubtful noise.

"I am certainly not giving him warning beforehand." Grantaire defended. "And if he tries to call me a woman, I am going to kidnap Courfeyrac and force this gathering to relocate elsewhere without him."

"I don't think this is about Courfeyrac's horrible poems anymore," Joly repeated Courfeyrac's earlier realisation. "In fact, I'm not entirely sure this is the best idea. Why can’t we have a nice poetry reading and leave it at that? Perhaps no one will be feeling sufficiently amorous for an orgy. Perhaps you and Enjolras might like a private conversation first. Perhaps my dear Eagle and I will lead our friends to my rooms, and leave you and Enjolras to tussle on your own."

"Feuilly has sacrificed his Saturday night in hopes of debauchery," Grantaire countered reasonably. "And I know our intrepid leader will be disappointed if he does not lose his virginity whilst engaging in a symbolic demonstration of fraternité and revolutionary comradeship. He will want to embrace each of his brothers-in-arms in turn before he comes for the first time, mark my words. I don't know what I will be doing. Perhaps I shall sing La Marseillaise while he conducts his communion. I am from Marseille after all." This thought cheered him considerably. To have Enjolras' cock in his mouth and his fingers in his hair would be bliss, of course, but the look of immense unamusement that such capering might earn him would be enough to make Grantaire see heaven.

Grantaire smiled dreamily into the middle distance, and had to be steered around a corner. The group strolled in silence for a while, listening to Enjolras give serious and ill informed critiques in-between agonising recitations from Courfeyrac. The rhythm had something of a Socratic dialogue to it, though to what conclusions they came none could tell, as it was not clear that they even understood each other. It was not late enough in the evening for drunken disorderliness, but that just made the disgust and judgement of passing pedestrians even sweeter.

"For some men," Joly concluded after a particularly evocative stanza about a damp cavern full of bumpy boulders and stalactites, "literacy is but a curse."

"Not upon himself, but rather a curse inflicted upon society at large," added Bossuet. "Perhaps if Buonaparté had never learned to read, France would still be a Republic."

"Perhaps if every citizen learned to read," interjected Combeferre over his shoulder, "France will be a Republic again."

The group strolled at a leisurely pace, and message runners were used to going about at a jog. Thus, by the time that they arrived at their destination, the gamin was already waiting for Grantaire. At the sight of the wooden box, whistles of approval arose from some of the entourage. Grantaire paid his messenger an entire franc, and hefted the box with a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)Paintings of barricades - you know I'm thinking about delacroix but this is set before Delacroix's even started on it, and I can't make myself fudge the timeline quite that much. That's what I get for setting this in 1828 during the Restoration.  
> 2)Theo, georges, Jean-marie - I wanted a)someone named Theophanie because I thought it was an interesting name, b)someone named after Sand, and c) someone named Jean for Jehan. That Theophany superficially resembles Theodule and Georges… is Georges….sorry Marius I absolutely did not intend this. However, having accepted the coincidence, I have decided that eventually Jean-Marie changes her name to Jean-Viola-Jeanne, because I love to bully Marius. When he first hears all three names together at once, he has an out of body experience and starts crying.  
> 3)The method of production of creme de cassis was allegedly revolutionised in the 1840's, and it was not widely available or mass produced before this time. However, while not as popular or widely available as it will eventually be, I'm hoping that in 1828 it's still not impossible that Combeferre could produce a bottle. Perhaps he enjoys obscure liqueurs. Yes I am just yet another person who tries to be historically accurate with Canon Era fic who is insisting that somehow someone could produce a bottle of creme de cassis. I have noted this tendency in several of my favourite writers so I'm justifying it as fanon. I just want Courfeyrac to have a blanc-cassis. He deserves a Kir for all the nonsense I put him through.  
> 4)Born of the mud and not stained by it is 出淤泥而不染, a common way to describe the lotus flower, a symbol of purity and also sometimes divinity (or divinity analogues) in Taoism and Buddhism. I know Grantaire isn't gonna know it and if anyone would be the orientalist it would be Prouvaire, BUT I am Chinese and he is the POV character and despite having meticulously researched too many inconsequential things to make sure they are 1828 compliant I also just have to acknowledge these are fake made up words on the internet so I can make use him one (1) of my cultural references in revenge for having to google every other word that came out of his mouth in the brick. Sorry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I planned to update this daily, but have another chapter, even though it hasn't been a full day yet - I went to sleep at 6 and woke at noon, so technically it's a new day for ME.

Though he was a southern transplant like all the Amis save Bossuet, Enjolras did not rent rooms at a hotel or boarding house. His parents had made a gift of his own property when he came to Paris to attend Louis-le-Grand, and here he lived alone. There was a neighbour who had been bribed to be his guardian on paper before he reached his majority, but he’d had otherwise no oversight since the age of fourteen. Despite being a helpless bachelor, he kept no regular servants, finding it unrepublican to have live-in domestics, and his only concessions to good housekeeping was to send his washing to a laundress and to hire someone to mop his floors and dust his bookshelves once a week. He paid this person three francs for three hour's work, according to his strict views on waged labour and fair compensation. The house had a tiny garden, which was allowed to grow how it liked, then mowed and pruned to the point of baldness twice a year to keep it in check. No aesthetic consideration was ever given in this indiscriminate reaping.

Inside the house there were five bedrooms of varying sizes. Enjolras used the second biggest room, the one with the best lighting, as a study, in which he crammed the innumerable papers and books that his activities necessitated. He slept in a narrow bunk in a prison cell off the side of this room, which had once been a maid's chamber. He allegedly preferred this arrangement because having a tiny bare room to sleep in permitted him to empty his mind and fall asleep more efficiently. Other rooms were occasionally used by friends and fellows in need of temporary lodgings, but the house was so bare and austere that most moved back out quickly once they were back on their feet, though Enjolras never hurried anyone or turned anyone out. Now that Pontmercy had taken up with Courfeyrac, this house was Lesgle's third most frequent choice of perch, after his dear Joly and their dear Musichetta.

Enjolras had a cellar that stored a great deal of arms and munitions, and a garret in which was piled a large number of mildly seditious papers, too explicit to be kept in the study. His kitchen was spacious but bare, his pantry likewise. His dining room had a large table, a corner of which was littered with yet more papers and books, this time for his studies - Enjolras did most of his schoolwork while he ate, if he happened to be dining at home, in order to clear time for more important things.

These details of his living arrangements were known to Grantaire, but he had never before witnessed this sanctum sanctorum with his own lowly eyes. The group poured into the house, up the stairs, and towards what appeared to be the biggest bedroom. It was clear which member of their party had been here before, and which had not. Feuilly had a mischievous look on his face, and L'Aigle was smiling. Courfeyrac snickered to himself in anticipation. As Courfeyrac made himself at home and flung open the door, Grantaire had to suppress a burst of laughter.

The bedroom was more than sizable, but it seemed cramped thanks to the gargantuan bed that it held. It was an old fashioned affair, elaborately made and big enough to sleep eight at a squeeze. It was not old enough to be a genuine Rococo piece, and was likeliest a bit of vulgar bourgeois affectation. It was ill suited to the style and décor of the house, and had clearly been shoved inside the only room in which it would comfortably fit, and promptly forgotten about.

"This, dear friends, is the true reason why Enjolras sleeps in a closet," announced Courfeyrac in triumph.

Enjolras coughed, his ears pink.

"I inherited it from a distant relative, and haven't got anywhere else to put it," he explained, trying to sound unembarrassed. "And it has a great number of secret compartments where I can store the most incriminating of our papers, which makes it too useful to be gotten rid of."

Grantaire was salivating with the jibes that this discovery availed to him. Would he begin the volley with a monologue about the inherent injustice of _lit de justice_ , or should he open with a pun about the aristocratic decadence of _lits à la Duchesse_ ? Perhaps if he simpered enough about the spectacle of the _lit de parade_ and attending to Enjolras at _petit lever_ , Enjolras would deliver one of his disdainful looks and scathing retorts. The possibilities opened up like a flower, or rather, parted like a baldachin. Grantaire forgot about the symposium, the orgy, the hideous poetry, the promised irrumatio. He cast aside the conjugal possibilities of the bed, and seized up the allegorical. The truly outrageous size was more Renaissance than Rococo, but he only needed an excuse. And what an excuse it was! The elaborate form evoked the aristocracy; the imitation of refinement, the grand bourgeoisie. In this bed, Grantaire found a symbol of all that Enjolras resisted. His heartbeat quickened. His blood trembled in his veins. His vision blurred at the edges. He may or may not have been panting.

"So," said Grantaire with a dawning smile. "Is this what moves your blood?"

"No," said Enjolras shortly, having seen through Grantaire's barely concealed glee. "If anyone wants to make jokes about a state bed or a royal reception, he is welcome to make it in his own quarters."

Undeterred, Grantaire shoved his chest of treasures in the direction of Bahorel, and elbowed his way through the tittering throng. He threw himself onto the bed and arranged his limbs seductively. "Cast me not aside, sweet Enjolras," Grantaire said with satisfaction as he stretched out, "even if I am not permitted the _entrée familiére_ , at least allow me to attend to your _grand lever_."

Bahorel snorted loudly, and the rest of the onlookers burst into childish giggles. Grantaire licked his lips to reiterate his point. Bolstered by the reception, he continued. "What a fine baldachin surrounds us, is this inner sanctum the seat of your bed of justice, then? Shall we array ourselves at the diagonals, so that you may sit there in the corner and receive us in turn? What a grand parliament chamber! Perhaps I, with no place among your councillors, may be permitted the role of the cushion beneath your royal feet——"

Before his monologue could get truly out of hand, he was arrested by an astonishing sight. Enjolras was laughing at him.

"Don't you think I know it is ridiculous?" Enjolras said, the silver peals of his laughter subsiding into a reserved smile. "But nevertheless, we are having an orgy, and this bed was made for orgies. Let it fulfil its true purpose for once."

"Made for—" The air deflated out of him. "Did you-" Grantaire took a deep breath. "Enjolras. Did you consent to participate in an orgy, just because you owned a suitable bed?!"

Enjolras would not meet his eyes.

Grantaire's jaw dropped open in astonished delight.

"With that said!" Courfeyrac cried desperately, wedging himself between Enjolras and Grantaire, and similarly arraying himself on the bed. "Is it time for poetry yet? Prouvaire, oh glittering pearl of poetics, the most Byronesque of Bouzingos, please, teach us the mysterious ways of your Romantic Poets." Courfeyrac covered Grantaire's face and upper torso with a massive overstuffed cushion encased in silken damask, and pillowed himself upon it. "Are we to begin the debauchery? Enjolras! Be a good host and produce some pens and paper for note taking, posthaste!"

Grantaire elbowed Courfeyrac, but did not otherwise struggle. He was dazed. He was concussed. He had been trepanned and his brain was leaking out. He forgot about the elaborate metaphor he had constructed about Apollo and the Sun King, and accepted back into his heart the conjugal use of the bed. He wasn't even wet any more. All he could do was reel in disbelief. Enjolras had been reduced to living in a closet because of his stupid bourgeois orgy bed. Did he feel too ashamed to sleep in it day-to-day? Did he feel it was too unrevolutionary?

"Why do you not sleep in this bed day-to-day?" Grantaire asked, muffled. "Would it be too unrepublican for you, maid Marianne, too decadent? Why now then? Would the sublime expression of fraternité embodied by the physical communion of our revolutionary society upon it redeem it in your eyes?"

Courfeyrac did his level best to smother Grantaire with the pillow. "Who wants a blowjob?" He asked desperately. "Anyone? Are we in the mood for sodomy today, my good fellows? Enjolras! Have you anything for lubrication? Tallow is fine enough, I suppose, but it would be more Grecian to have olive oil, and more luxurious to have spermaceti! Wine! What is a symposium without wine?" He clutched at the pillow and glared at Enjolras. "Where is your wine, Enjolras?"

"I still have the bottles you left in the cellar," Enjolras said reluctantly, allowing, as he always did, the friendship of his fellows to draw him away from his quarrel with Grantaire. "I shall go retrieve it. And I don't use sperm oil or any kind of whale byproduct. Whaling is—"

"Gross exploitation of workers, yes, we all agree," finished Feuilly, who arranged himself on the bed on Courfeyrac's other side. He held the volume of poetry that had started all of this in a death grip, and was refusing to let Courfeyrac open its pages. Grantaire pinched at Courfeyrac's side, but he would not budge.

"Mmmmphf," began Grantaire. He struggled a moment, and flipped Courfeyrac off him, nearly kneeing Feuilly in the face in the process. "No need," said Grantaire, triumphantly pinning Courfeyrac with his thighs. "Bahorel, my chest of pleasures?"

The chest was passed to Grantaire via a brief procession of reverent hands. Grantaire set it down on Courfeyrac’s chest, got out the key, which hung from a chain around Grantaire’s neck, and unlocked it.

Jehan climbed onto the bed and leaned in, drawn to the promise of hedonism like a cat lured by fresh milk.

Grantaire opened the case. The topmost level had a gigantic jar of the best cold cream that his money could buy, an emulsion of almond oil, olive oil, spermaceti, rose water, and an exquisite perfume that complemented the chief rosy scent. Grantaire dropped the jar onto Courfeyrac, who grunted at the impact and picked it up. Next, Grantaire retrieved a brass syringe and a rubber bulb. "Were you really going to take it up your behind without so much as a wash first?" He said, wrinkling his nose pointedly. "Amateurs. Orgies, like assassinations, require either a great deal of planning, or a great deal of panicked scrabbling."

"I shall fetch the wine," said Combeferre, who had turned steadily redder and redder as he watched Grantaire rooting around in the chest. He hurried out of the room, taking Joly with him to assist.

Grantaire next pulled out a strange deflated cylinder of thick rubber. “Sailors use these for long voyages, ladies of the sea, they are sometimes called,” he explained cheerfully. “Our Eagle left this at my place when he used it last. Exquisite stuff, but our unlucky friend learned first hand the importance of lubrication. You would not believe the chafing. Poor Joly was convinced he had caught something nasty.”

There was a round of sympathetic hissing.

"Have you got a washstand, my good fellow? Or perhaps even a bathtub." Bahorel asked Enjolras. “We’re going to need to wash up some, before and after.” 

"There is a washstand in my study," answered Enjolras, and beckoned. Bossuet picked up the syringe and slinked out behind Bahorel, making a smiling, harried escape as his fellows leered at him with admiration and pity.

"This is not how I thought things were going to go," Jehan said sadly, staring up at the ridiculous canopy. Grantaire dismounted from Courfeyrac and set the chest on the side table, for a more stable surface. Beside Jehan, Courfeyrac and Feuilly began to wrestle. It was much too vicious to be homoerotic. Jehan sighed.

"Not to worry, my friend," Grantaire said with cheer. "No one expected Enjolras to have a secret orgy room."

"It's not a very good orgy room," Prouvaire pronounced facetiously. “Where are the couches? The best orgies require a multitude of couches. The curtains should be gauze and not damask. And the bedding! Rococo to the last. Passé doesn’t begin to describe it. No skulls, no gargoyles, and not so much as a single memento mori. Perhaps we should decamp to the garden. Wouldn’t it be more romantic if we could see the stars, burning eternal and merciless above us?”

Grantaire gave this deep consideration. “No,” he decided. “Enjolras has almost no grass in his garden. We’d get dirt everywhere. And the bugs! Think of the bugs!”

“Nothing wrong with a few insects,” Jehan insisted with smiling sternness. “The true malady of the century is that we are too removed from the natural world. Embrace me not within the pruned and pristine walkways of the Jardins de Luxembourg, but rather amidst the real wildness of nature untouched by man! Lacking that, even a tumble atop the dirt and misshapen roots of the garden of Enjolras would be Eden in comparison. Nature exists not for the pleasure of man, but we may take our pleasure amidst it. What is the use in coupling, if we will not be naked together, and how can we truly be naked, without casting aside our manufactured pretensions? No, man is not an animal, but neither is he beyond the bestial. Say rather that -”

There came a crash somewhere in the next room.

“That’s L’Aigle, I suppose,” Joly said. Courfeyrac snatched back his volume with a crow of triumph, and sprang off the bed and out the door to protect it, clutching it to his chest like a maiden with a love letter. Given that Courfeyrac had been the one who composed this particularly demented love letter, it ought to have been Marius Pontmercy who clutched at it so. Nevertheless.

Grantaire laughed as he set out a line of sexual aids on the side table that he’d colonised. Aphrodisiac tinctures, rings of rubber, a rather barbaric chastity aid full of spikes. Creams and oils that induced warmth or coolness or pleasant tingling. Creams and oils that induced mild agony. A whip, a riding crop, a paddle. Ropes. A pair of genuine police issue handcuffs. A blunted dagger glittering with paste jewels. Scarves both of thick damask and gauzy chiffon. Assorted gags. A woman’s chemise and corset, with matching stockings and garters, and a pot of rouge. A cat-o-nine-tails. And, at the bottom of it all, some of the only objects that actually belonged to Grantaire: a harness of supple leather straps, and phalluses that could be secured to it. Some were of the common variety, proud and erect. Three were home made, flaccid little stumps lying against soft round testes. One was delicately sculpted clay, one was polished wood, and the third was amateurishly moulded rubber. Of the selection of erect phalluses, there was present wood, ivory, rubber, and glass, as well as an extravagant member made of silver.

“What decadence,” Feuilly teased, when he saw the silver number. “Why, Grantaire, I had no idea you were a man of such means.”

“It is hollow on the inside, and it is not mine,” answered Grantaire. “As you have no doubt recognised your lovely underthings mixed amongst the others, you may have guessed that this is the repository of our collective sins. Enjolras says that he hides seditious materials in secret compartments of this bed. Well, I hide the proofs of deviancy entrusted to me in my little chest. Perhaps it is fate that the two should meet in such intimate circumstances.”

“How scrupulous of you,” Feuilly replied. “And all this time, I had assumed that you’d shoved my little outfit under your mattress or kept it beneath a floorboard somewhere. No doubt all our companions appreciate you as deeply as I do for your discretion.” 

He picked up the tube of spikes that passed for a chastity aid. “What ingenious design,” said he, gazing upon it with candid admiration. “Do tell me who this belongs to. Why, I should like to borrow this some time and experiment with it. I have never seen something so sharp and cruel outside of copperplates.”

Combeferre, returning with Joly and bearing wine and cups, almost tripped over and had to be steadied by Jehan, lest he dropped his precious burdens.

“You man borrow it whenever you like,” Combeferre said, meticulously populating the unoccupied half of the side table with bottles and refusing to look at Feuilly, standing just beside him and stroking the sharp points of his favourite toy. “Dear Jehan, Enjolras has no skulls for you to drink out of, but if you look in my satchel by the bed, you will find both the bottle of crème de cassis I promised earlier and the drinking horn you left behind Wednesday last."

“You are a wonder, Combeferre!” Jehan sprang to his feet and retrieved the items. He raised the horn like a magical relic, and gazed upon it with the intentness of a man with only fifteen minute’s privacy gazing upon a volume of pornography.

“Where’s dear Bossuet gone?” Joly set down the tray he carried, stacked with cups and laden with the sad offerings of the larder. Two kinds of hard cheese, an assortment of wrinkled fruits, and a scattering of paper-wrapped caramels. More promisingly, he was also carrying two bottles of brandy. “This isn’t very poetic, I don’t think. Shall I run out and get us some grapes and sausages? What do Romantics like to nibble on, Prouvaire?”

“At my last reading, we ate ortolans that we had roasted ourselves, not yet grain-gorged, slaughtered with the knife rather than in a cask.” Jehan picked up a gauzy scarf and tied it across his eyes. He looked at his friends through the veil of cloth, as if he was looking beyond the veil of the universe. “Then we meditated on the nature of death and suffering, and whether eating them without the marination fundamentally changed the act of their consumption. Does humaneness and mercy make a difference, if it impacts but a few moments? They were lean and stringy and didn’t taste very good, poets are not often good chefs. Nevertheless, the metaphor stood. I kept some of the skulls, if you'd like one.”

Feuilly laughed gently, and Jehan smiled at him. Another crash sounded, this time in the direction of the privy.

“There he is,” exclaimed Joly. “I shall go retrieve him before further misadventure.”

“He absconded with my syringe,” Grantaire said. “I am hoping he manages to return without denting the brass or poking an eye out.”

“Well! Great minds do think alike! I shall borrow the bulb, by your leave.” Joly picked up the bulb in one hand and one of the tallow candles in the other. “Do you think I should use some wine? It is a disproven treatment, but it relaxes me so.” He wandered cheerfully out the door, towards the source of the distant commotion.

Combeferre watched him go doubtfully. “They’ll return when they return, I suppose. We can always send a search party later.”

Courfeyrac, who had managed to lose his waistcoat but not his poems, peered back inside the room, and brightened at the sight of alcohol. “Intoxication!” he cried joyfully, and made for the bottles. Taking advantage of his lapse, Feuilly and Jehan wrested the book from his unresisting hands.

“As we have no live feminine models to hone the anatomical descriptions of the pieces,” Jehan said, with a nervous glance at Grantaire, who smiled back gently, “we must focus upon the poetic construction. Let us begin with a line-by-line critique.”

Grantaire straightened his cravat. “I will be right back,” he said, “feel free to start without me.”

“Grantaire! Where are you going?” Feuilly said, in the middle of raiding Combeferre’s open satchel for a pen and some ink.

“Searching the pantry,” Grantaire said, “Surely this cannot be everything edible. Man does not live by wine alone. No, do not laugh at Grantaire, he knows he is a hypocrite. But he wants his bread and his cakes! I must confront our esteemed host at once. The matter is urgent.”

“Something’s urgent,” muttered Combeferre. “Better you work it out first, before you goad Enjolras into skewering you in front of our merry band of friends.”

Grantaire dimpled at him sweetly. “Haven’t I strived to air out all my fits of madness before my friends? And besides, I have promised that I should not press my suit where it is unwanted.”

“He is relinquishing his jealously guarded chastity after a bit of taunting from you,” Courfeyrac said with a roll of his eyes. “I should not count that as a sign of disinterest.”

“We are not gathered here to engage in petty individual dalliances,” Grantaire scolded him sternly, “but to advance the cause of poetry and eroticism, and to reaffirm our revolutionary brotherhood through a symbolic exchange of our vital essences. And to drink all his wine.”

Combeferre failed to stifle his laughter.

“You go find Enjolras, we will begin on the wine,” Courfeyrac said, and urged him away with a shooing motion, as if Grantaire was a mouser or a pet poodle. Filling up the cups with generous pours of brandy, he turned and pressed a drink each into the hands of Prouvaire and Feuilly. Draping himself across both their laps, he loosened his cravat and adopted a languid smile. “Now, my friends, what would you think if I rewrote the first poem entirely in dactylic hexameter?”

Grantaire wandered out the door, listening to Jehan’s firm repudiation. The worst part was that Courfeyrac was only half-serious about tormenting Marius. The other half was serious about wanting to present Pontmercy with earnest works of eroticism. Neither half of him was actually capable of producing good poetry. It was a mystery how Courfeyrac could compose blistering political tracts that left the reader feeling as if they had been staring directly into the sun, yet could not manage to depict a biologically instinctive process with anything but the most wretched and stilted of verses. Well, either wretched and stilted, or wretched and hilarious. Perhaps Jehan ought to convince him to give up and convert his erotica to prose. Perhaps if Courfeyrac was criticising the sexual technique of a Bourbon or a Buonaparté, he might impart some compelling emotion. Disgusted at the thought, Grantaire pulled a face. Then he remembered Pontmercy the Bonapartist, and laughed to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)Louis-le-Grand is the most prestigious high school in France, and it's in the Latin Quarter near the various other haunts of the Amis. Hugo sat in on classes there while boarding at another school.  
> 2)bed puns...sorry…  
> -a Lit de parade is like a fancy four poster bed for fancy aristos, basically a state bed.  
> -Lits a la duchesse are four poster/tester beds that are only supported at the head of the bed leaving the foot of the tester to sort of float dangling and unsupported  
> -The lit de justice is a formal arrangement of parliament, with the king sitting under a baldaquin (baldachin) and people arrayed like a rhombus with him as one of its points.  
> -A baldaquin/baldachin is a big expensive fancy cloth, which can refer to the canopy of the bed or, like, the cloth around a throne or even around a ceremonial bier for a dead important person.  
> -Petit/grand lever, the entree familiere - the lever is basically a ritual of the ruler rising and dressing, Louis XIV formalised it into an elaborate formal court ritual. The petit lever came first, which was the most intimate, then the grand lever. The entree familiere was the first wave of people who went into the king’s bedroom but also it can literally mean the familiar entrance so… yeah lol sorry i don’t speak French please tell me if the innuendo doesn’t stand  
> 3)ortolans were a delicacy. They were fattened with grains by being shut in the dark in cages, which would trigger the instinct to gorge themselves, then drowned in casks of Armagnac as a marinade. Thus prepared, they were roasted and eaten whole. They could be eaten head and all or you could eat it without the head. The bigger bones are spat out I guess. Diners draped a towel over their heads while they did this either to trap the aromas for max enjoyment or to "hide from god" which. yeah. Horribly cruel, but it was once a High Delicacy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof the troll fics jamming up the tags...yikes... If you're reading this while powering through the tag spamming I applaud you and also please let me know so I can give you a medal for bravery.

Candlelight cast a thin wedge of light through a half-shut door down the hall. Grantaire sauntered over, hands stuck in his pockets as if he was out on a stroll. He gave a quick knock, and stuck his head inside the study before he received any response.

It was not Enjolras, but rather Bahorel, _en chemise_ , scrubbing himself at a washstand. The shirt gaped open at his neck, the neat pintucked pleats at the breast curving in echoing ripples. It had slid halfway down his muscular shoulders. A cravat laid crumpled on the floor, but Bahorel had taken the pains to spread his waistcoat on a chair. Grantaire noted with envy the daringly intricate embroidery upon Bahorel's braces, which matched the outrageous lilac of his fashionably cut coat.

"He's gone to humiliate himself in the privy with Joly and Bossuet," said Bahorel, helpfully. "There's no amount of money you could pay me to administer myself a clyster in some other man's house. Isn’t it enough to give yourself a good scrub and a thorough stretch?"

"Joly insists, so Bossuet and I are in the habit. I suppose poor virginal Enjolras has been duped into believing its necessity," Grantaire replied. Then, outrage. "Who said I was looking for him?"

"Your saunter and your smirk betrayed you at once, peacock”. Bahorel pulled up the hem of his shirt and began scrubbing between his legs. Contrary to his lush sideburned cheeks, he kept his groin as smooth and hairless as sculpted marble. Grantaire repressed a wince at the thought of having stubble in so many places. Bahorel caught Grantaire's considering gaze wandering betwixt his lean thighs, and parted them. "You stare so, my friend. Were you hoping to help me bathe?"

"I was rather hoping to ask Enjolras if he had anything edible in his pantry," Grantaire refuted, unmoved. He unearthed a fistful of handkerchiefs from his pocket, and took off his coat. "However, I might freshen up myself."

Bahorel gestured towards the washstand, clean water in the basin with a clean linen cloth hanging off the side and a bit of finely milled but weakly scented soap on its little shelf. "As your Apollo said to me, so I say to you: be my guest."

"How well you play hostess," Grantaire fluttered his lashes mockingly at Bahorel, then took off his waistcoat and loosened his dandy's corset. He heaved a breath of relief as his flesh settled back into shape. Bahorel crowed at the sight.

"Grantaire, my good fellow!" Said he. "You claim to be untempted by the vice of the dandy, and pretend to be as indifferent to your dress as stern Enjolras. And yet what is this I spy? Could it be that you have discovered a secret fount of vanity at last? Or does your handsome friend Bahorel cut such a dashing figure with his own waspish waist that you could not help but follow?" Bahorel raised up the hem of his shirt further and gave his trim stomach a pat. It, like Grantaire's middle, was marked with the impressions of creases left behind by a shirt under a corset. Grantaire resisted the urge to curse. This was why he never wore a corset when he knew Bahorel would get to see him undress.

Grantaire's corset had been made to a special design that reduced the hips more than it emphasized the waist, but it also provided a tolerable excuse for his natural silhouette. The uniformity of shape between a respectably fashionable lady and an incorrigible dandy had rendered feeble and insincere Grantaire's protestations of being too ugly to care for the fashionable. Thus, Bahorel's eyes gleamed as he considered Grantaire.

"My friend," Bahorel said as he studied Grantaire's indifferent leather suspenders and the dull blue of his discarded waistcoat, the unfashionably high mouth of which covered his chest almost to the throat. His shirt was not so old fashioned as to be ruffled at the front, but it was intolerably plain instead. Even the pretty silk cravat being untied was considered staid and unadventurous by this hound of fashion. "Perhaps you will consent to join me some time in being fitted for a new coat. How does a man become an artist, but by affectation? A visit to Staub's will bolster your fame as surely as exhibiting at the Salon."

Grantaire laughed at him without reserve. He unbuttoned his shirt at the neck and pulled it over his head. Beneath it he wore a sleeveless under-shirt of thin linen, tightly tailored at the chest to manage the small breasts. He divested himself of this too, and began to strip off his trousers. "It is my soul which is empty, Bahorel, not my eye sockets! I could never be a Byron, or even a Brummell. I am far too handsome."

Bahorel laughed, but not without pity.

"Only think," Grantaire said, trouserless but still stockinged, picking up the soap and lathering it with the water. "How heartbroken would the grisettes of the Latin Quarter be, should I shed my slovenliness. My best strategy for ingratiating myself with a pretty girl is to be a beast against which her beauty would find easy contrast." He scrubbed at his face, neck, and hands, then his arms and underarms. He was businesslike as he swiped at his chest, and the sweaty slivers underneath the puffy nubs of his breasts. The cold water was bracing in the faint autumn chill, and his nipples peaked unpleasantly. He used up two handkerchiefs making doubly sure he was spotless between the legs, contorting himself into various awkward positions out of a misplaced sense of shyness — it was only Bahorel after all — before he gave up and brazenly propped one leg upon a chair. He rinsed off and patted himself dry with another handkerchief, cursing at how the curls at his groin grew unruly with his efforts. He attempted to comb them with his fingers, to no avail.

Bahorel watched this impromptu hairdressing with amusement. "What effort you put into perfecting your surprise. Shall I fetch you a pomade and some Hungary water?"

"I am already fragrant with wine tonight," Grantaire said. He looked at the linen towel hanging off the side of the washstand. Bahorel had courteously used his own handkerchiefs as well for washing, and the towel was clean and untouched. It was also obviously regularly used, not yet old or worn but too soft and well washed to be new. Grantaire glanced at Bahorel, arranging his sideburns. Then he looked back at Enjolras' washcloth.

He was not a strong man, and he caved, as he always did, to temptation. He picked up the washcloth gingerly, and used it, rather guiltily, to pat at himself in spots where he was still damp. The cloth was soft against his face, and smelled faintly of lavender. He used it to dab at his neck, his underarms, and his chest. Then.

"You had better never tell Enjolras about this," Grantaire warned direly, and gave himself a purposeful rub with the cloth between his legs, from the pubic mound all the way back to his tailbone. It was slightly scratchy on the sensitive skin, and failed to stroke him anywhere truly erogenous. The pleasure was entirely in the transgression. Still, Grantaire's breath hitched. He sighed, and did it again.

"Never tell me about what, Grantaire?" Enjolras asked sharply, and threw open the door. Grantaire froze, and desperately covered himself with the cloth.

"Nothing!" He squeaked. Enjolras limped into the room, face paper white with two spots of unnatural colour high on his cheeks. A thin sheen of sweat glittered on his face, dampening the curls on his brow and glistening at the tip of his nose. His eyes were dark and his pupils had dilated all the way open. He looked dazed and despoiled, for all that he was fully dressed.

Bossuet peered in behind Enjolras. "Grantaire!" He said cheerfully. "So you have shown Enjolras your secret!"

"I have not!" Grantaire yelped. Joly appeared beside Bossuet, and gave an incredulous look at Grantaire, gesturing expansively to his naked body and the thin cloth covering his sex.

"I assume the much touted surprise is not that you cinch your waist like a dandy," Enjolras said, picking up Grantaire’s corset from the floor with the tips of his thumb and forefinger. His lips pouted into a delicious moue of disgust. Grantaire made a desperate gesture at Bahorel, who snatched Grantaire's shirt and handed it to him whilst Enjolras inspected the corset with a critical eye. Enjolras tolerated dandyism of style, and was indulgent with Bahorel's weakness for waistcoats and Courfeyrac's occasional bouts of frivolity. But he did not stand for the moral and social vacuity of true dandyism, and it was clear which breed of the disease he suspected Grantaire's corset of embodying.

Grantaire scrambled into his shirt, and managed to be covered to the mid-thigh when Enjolras turned to him again. He tugged at the gaping collar nervously.

"Joly and Bossuet had me in here before administering my clysters," Enjolras said magnanimously, as if he was somehow making a peace offering by dropping the matter of the corset in favour of the topic at hand. "I found it tolerable enough."

Grantaire, who had stopped breathing, gazed at his friends with terrified admiration. To have not only conned innocent Enjolras into accepting a clyster - multiple, even - but also seized the chance and despoiled him before the rest of their friends could get to him! Well. You had to praise initiative like that.

Joly laughed. "We rubbed him to climax to help him relax for the syringe," he said soothingly, as if he knew any sensual description would strike Grantaire dead where he stood. "It was hardly a comprehensive initiation into the mysteries of the erotic. A little clichéd, even, given the body of literature."

Grantaire, who had never once in his life appreciated lurid erotica concerning enemas and spankings delivered by unprincipled doctors and strict schoolmasters, could only tremble as he felt himself immediately join the ranks of the innumerable perverts who enjoyed such things. Perhaps Joly and Bossuet would be amenable to re-enacting the experience upon him afterwards. He looked at the syringe and the bulb, both of which had rather foolishly been entrusted to Bossuet. He thought about how many times their damp unyielding tips had penetrated him before. The hand clutching the washcloth tightened until every knuckle had gone beyond whiteness and into translucency.

He croaked, "how generous of you, to make yourself so available. Perhaps I ought to follow your example, if only in this matter." He marched woodenly to Bossuet, picked up the syringe with numb fingers, and fled out the door.

"There is warm water in the kitchen," Joly called.

"Thanks," Grantaire muttered weakly. He did not have the breath to make himself heard to Joly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)at the time the vainest of dandies sometimes wore man-corsets, which is what Grantaire's wearing here, though his is constructed a bit differently. The silhouette of an hourglass shape was basically a unisex ideal, so he has somewhat different Body Image Issues than what we Modern Readers might expect of him.  
> 2)hey enemas are deeply not good for your gut health but they didn't know that back then. Also I just like Joly being a quack.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Grantaire coming out to Enjolras. There is no negativity or rejection, but Grantaire feels some self doubt and there's a moment of tension.

Grantaire stumbled down the stairs, found a discarded pitcher and some floral soap on the counter next to the full kettle, and fixed himself a jug of the necessary mixture. The kitchen had a backdoor which opened out to the yard, and Grantaire hurried through with his ill gotten gains, jogging over to the privy and shutting himself in with haste, praying that none of Enjolras' neighbours were attempting to peer in upon the commotion that disturbed the usually quiet house.

He made his ablutions as efficiently as he could, and cleaned himself again. Throughout the process, he clenched the washcloth in his hand. Once he was floating and empty and clean, he stood by the door for several long moments, thinking about the sweat upon that fine marbled face, how a look of effort might transform the noble brow, how Enjolras had needed to be relaxed. Joly was a medical genius, there was no doubt about it.

He thought about how he was dressed in nothing but shirt, shoes, and stockings, and how likely he would be arrested by a patrolling policeman if he was to run screaming into the streets. He thought about doing it anyway.

In the course of Grantaire's deep and fervent admiration for Enjolras, physical lust had always been but a side note. Of course Grantaire yearned and ached and throbbed for him daily, but it was only as a consequence of his admiration for other characteristics - the strength of belief, the ardent flame in his eyes, his quiet love for his friends, which might have been the only thing he shared with Grantaire. The crushing adoration that the very thought of Enjolras elicited within Grantaire could have been forever segregated from the base desire. But now could never be, because Enjolras had opened himself up like a flower, and invited his fellows to drink him up.

Grantaire stroked himself between the legs a little, wet. He thought of the challenging tilt of that golden head, the blaze in those piercing eyes. He clenched the washcloth like a talisman. Then, he remembered the words springing forth from his parted lips, and how Enjolras had given the assent to be made flesh. Those rose petal lips had opened with such ease, yet they had been twisted with their usual derision. How virginal he was, how burningly pure. Even after knowing that he had been touched by Joly and Bossuet, Grantaire could not help but think Enjolras ignorant of the flesh. Even after knowing that he was empty and ready and open, and covered in sweat at the ordeal of his cleansing. So elaborately and ceremoniously prepared, like a bride on her wedding night.

How profane it would be, for Grantaire to touch him.

Grantaire ceased rubbing himself, and felt the pleasure drain away. He was suddenly cold. The smile lingering on his lips faded, and the amusement at this grand face drained away until he was left with a great hollow void. He scrambled to hold onto the warmth and the humour of the situation, but it all trickled away like water between his fingers. How repulsed Enjolras would be! He could not bear to even think of it. He could withstand any other kind of repudiation from Enjolras, but Grantaire would petrify and then crumble away into dust, if he should part his thighs and receive only scorn in return. He never permitted his partners to penetrate his sex, and insisted that if they wished to have him, it would be through sodomy alone. Often as not, he would affix a prosthetic to his harness, and be the one doing the fucking.

It was not that he could not accept what grew between his legs, or even that he was repulsed by it. He was a hedonist, and when he was alone, he pleasured himself without reservation. No, he was merely reluctant to see the judgement upon the faces of such intimate partners. Yet, if he was to go to Enjolras, he would irrevocably be exposed.

Grantaire wiped his wet fingers on his shirt. Hesitation set in, disguised as common sense. Still, he could not let go of the washcloth. He swallowed.

Then, he laughed.

What a shrinking violet he’d turned into. He had buggered and been buggered by almost every man here, and now he was afraid that Enjolras would see him naked. Well! That ship had already sailed. It was only the last ragged scrap of modesty that he needed to strip away. If Enjolras was repulsed by Grantaire, then that would be his loss. Where else in Paris could he ever find a partner more dedicated to his pleasure? Surely eagerness had to count for something, even in the stony heart of unyielding Enjolras.

Grantaire was never very good at lying to himself. Nevertheless, he made himself march back into the house. He was a coward, but he couldn’t make himself flee.

Like a man walking to his execution, Grantaire trudged back towards the bedroom with the ridiculous bed. The door of the bedroom was open, and all other lights on this floor of the house had gone dark. As Grantaire reached the top of the stairs, he heard a creak from behind him. He did not have to turn to know who it was. It was a farce, it was all a farce, and this coincidence had been inevitable.

“Grantaire,” said Enjolras. He was carrying a tray with a wheel of good brie and a whole fruit tart on it, his way lit by a single dim candle set upon the tray.

“Achilles,” said Grantaire. He was already defeated.

“I haven’t any cake, like you asked for, but I hope a tart will do,” Enjolras said. He smiled at Grantaire. Grantaire swallowed. That smile! Enjolras had not smiled at him like that since their first meeting. It was a gift. It was an offering. Enjolras would never bend in the matter of his principles, yet here he was, demonstrating that he was tractable in other ways. Grantaire choked down a sob of despair.

“Enjolras,” he said in a low voice. “I haven’t been totally honest. There is something you must know about me.”

Enjolras paused. His expression closed off. His warm eyes sharpened. His mouth returned to its characteristic angle.

“May I show you in the other room?” Grantaire gave a smile that gashed across his face like a knife wound. Wordlessly, Enjolras lead Grantaire down the hallway, into the private study that was his true sanctuary.

“Well?” Enjolras said. He set the tray down and crossed his arms. He had lost his coat in the interim, and his sober black waistcoat made him seem both stern and waifish. “What is it?” It was clear from his frown that he expected a great betrayal.

“It shall be obvious in a moment,” said Grantaire. He draped the crumpled cloth back over the washstand. Then he pulled up the hem of his shirt, and exposed himself to Enjolras, the way a drunkard might attempt to expose himself to passersby on the street.

There was a sharp inhale of breath.

“Do not,” Grantaire preempted, “call me a woman. You may insult me how you like, only do not call me that.”

Enjolras exhaled, and was silent.

Grantaire studied the dim silhouette of the books upon their shelves, and could not bear to look at Enjolras. He flushed in humiliation. After a moment, he let the hem of his shirt drop. He looked down at the floor.

Enjolras still said nothing. After an epoch of silence, Grantaire sighed, and began to reach for the clothes that he had discarded in this room, a lifetime ago.

“I will see myself out,” he said, still staring at the floorboards. A slender hand pressed his shoulder.

“Do not,” said Enjolras. Grantaire stilled, waiting.

Enjolras said nothing else.

Grantaire stood, quiescent. The sum of his world narrowed down to the firm grip on his shoulder. Two sets of soft breaths mingled contrapuntally. The night was cold.

“Do they all know?” Enjolras asked at last, softly.

“Yes,” said Grantaire.

“And you are not- you say you are not a woman.” Enjolras tightened his grip.

“No,” said Grantaire. “I have never been. It is only. A misfortune of birth. Like my unfortunate face.” He attempted to smile, and failed. “A metaphysical hermaphroditism. The spirit is a man, the body, the other thing. Only do not call it that. It is still a man’s body.”

"The third sex," said Enjolras.

"If you must, then yes."

“Show me again,” demanded Enjolras. “Take your shirt off.”

Grantaire obeyed. The hand on his shoulder lifted, and he felt an ache at its absence. The shirt was cast to the floor, and Grantaire stood with his hands hanging by his side. He did not dare cover himself. He also did not look up.

“Was this the secret you were so eager to surprise me with?” Enjolras murmured, not really inviting an answer. He lifted the candle from the tray, and held it up to illuminate their faces. Grantaire flinched at the light.

“Yes,” Grantaire said. “It seemed like it would be funny, to surprise you. I was drunk. And feeling amorous. I wanted you to see me.”

Enjolras laughed. It was not a derisive laugh, but neither was it tender. Grantaire dared to lift his eyes to the hand holding the candle.

“Put your shirt back on,” Enjolras said.

Grantaire squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes,” he said, and obeyed again. How obedient he could be. He had not known he was capable of it.

He stood still again, a marionette with loose strings.

Enjolras gripped his chin. Grantaire did not resist as his face was tilted. Their eyes met. He shivered.

“Let us return to our friends,” Enjolras said. Hope unfurled inside Grantaire like a spring flower, like the parted pink lips of Enjolras that now descended upon his cheek. How sweet it was, to receive even a fraternal kiss.

“Would you let me fuck you in the cunt, Grantaire?” Enjolras asked softly, not relinquishing his grip.

Grantaire licked his lips. “Yes,” said he. “As you wish. Anything.”

Enjolras smiled solemnly, and released Grantaire. He turned, picked up the tray, and led Grantaire back to their friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got rid of some of the ship tags cuz I mean while it IS an orgy fic it's pretty e/r centric and some of the tags have more screen time than others. I got so disgusted at all the tag spamming trollfic that it inspired me to clean up my own tags a little.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter of Shenanigans before the sex starts. However, I must warn you, there are some examples of very bad poetry that I would not begrudge you for skipping. They're bad, I presented them as translations that don't rhyme because I can't live my life writing bad erotic poetry IN FRENCH THAT RHYMES and then translating it back into English, that's all you need to know. Sorry Courfeyrac for making you bad at writing poetry.

When Grantaire trailed Enjolras into the bedroom, it was obvious that a shift had occurred between the two of them.

Feuilly, warmed by the brandy, booed Grantaire. “Did you corner him alone and despoil him further?” he demanded with delight. “How greedy of you! Joly and Bossuet have already been sentenced for their transgression. Confess, and your punishment may yet be commuted.”

Joly held the accursed volume of Courfeyrac’s smut, and Bossuet was on his knees before him.

“It was not a fair sentence,” Courfeyrac protested sadly.

Enjolras smiled at all of them. “I have been an ungracious host,” said he. “I haven’t anything substantial in the way of victuals, but here at least is something sweet.”

Combeferre cleared a spot on the side table so that Enjolras might set his burden down.

“We have begun without you, my dear,” Combeferre said gravely. He had ink splashed all over his hands. “We have reached the fifth entry.” There was a wild look in his eyes, as of love and hatred intermingled. He cast a desperate glance at the booklet Joly held.

Where all the other friends were in various stages of rumpled undress, Prouvaire was the only man totally naked. He was arranged across Bahorel’s lap, with the look of a disgruntled cat on his face.

“Please, by all means, continue,” Enjolras said. “There was no need to wait for us.”

“I am not giving Courfeyrac the satisfaction,” Jehan said, somewhat incomprehensibly. Full of brandy, he was no longer timid in any way. He crossed his legs to emphasise his soft member. “We are conducting an experiment according to the scientific method. None of us shall be permitted to seek pleasure until some line of Courfeyrac’s masterpiece stirs our blood first. It has been some stanzas, and I expect we will be waiting for some stanzas more. Possibly, none of us will ever experience orgasm again. Joly, continue.”

Joly obeyed with the look of a suffering martyr.

“ _Darling Marie-Jeanne of the crushed rose petals_  
_Sweet Marie-Jeanne of the trembling marble bosom_  
_Dotted with two red rubies upon the peaks._  
_Lovely Marie-Jeanne with your lovely thighs_  
_Part for me like the red sea_  
_Drench me in your tide_  
_Embrace me with your crushed rose petals_  
_Your rose petals bleed such honeyed nectar_  
_Your stamen and pistils tremble_  
_And dust me with golden pollen._  
_How you cling to me_  
_Like the suckered tentacles_  
_Of the deep sea kraken_  
_Like the barons of the Ancien Régime_  
_Cling to vanished greatness._  
_Like the moss upon the—_ ” 

Joly paused and looked at Courfeyrac. “Is Pontmercy not allegedly a baron?” he challenged. “Also, are you not in line to inherit a barony of your own?”

Courfeyrac scowled, and then immediately softened into a smile. “It is a stubborn stain, but one day it shall be washed clean.”

“Did she bleed on you, or did she piss on you?” Bahorel ribbed. “It wasn’t particularly clear.” Courfeyrac did not dignify this with a response.

“Hmm,” said Joly. Bossuet did not have any hair for him to pull, so he reached an absent hand down to pet at the bald head. “Dearest Eagle, please restrain your efforts. I do not want to associate the prowess of your tongue with the Barons of the Ancien Régime.”

“We are supposed to see how many poems it shall take for Joly to spill himself,” Courfeyrac explained sadly. “And he won’t let Bossuet pleasure him properly while he is reading. This punishment is most unfair. I am really the one being punished, not they, and I have never so much as peeped on you when you were pissing, Enjolras.”

“I have,” Grantaire lied cheerfully, just to rib Enjolras. He wedged himself onto the bed between Courfeyrac and Bahorel, and admired languidly the sight of Joly wincing his way through the last few stanzas of Marie-Jeanne. It was mostly about quicksand.

Enjolras frowned forbiddingly at Grantaire. “When was this?” he demanded.

“Why does it matter?” Grantaire replied happily. “You’ve already seen me naked. We are square.”

“No we are not,” said Feuilly. “When did he see you naked? Did you really tumble him in a corner while we were waiting? How unsporting!”

“No, no,” Grantaire assured. “I did not lay a single finger upon him. I only lifted my shirt and flashed him my privates, that’s all.” He repeated the movement to demonstrate, and was soundly rebuffed with loud jeers. 

“The poem,” Jehan protested. “The _poem_. What are your notes on the poem?”

“The evocation of the name was too repetitive,” Combeferre offered seriously. He had jotted notes in the margins of whatever it was that he was scribbling on some scrap paper.

“The meter,” Jehan pronounced with his eyes closed. “The meter is weak, and even when the syllables are stressed correctly they lack the necessary rhythm.” Combeferre jotted this down obligingly.

Courfeyrac accepted the criticism with good humour. He raised his glass and took a sip. “Marius will take care of it in the edit,” he reassured. “I shall pass your notes along most faithfully.”

“Marius has almost certainly never seen the stamen and pistils and pollen of a woman,” Feuilly said. “Say, do women have stamen and pistils? Perhaps it is only my proletarian ignorance, but I’ve certainly never seen Georges pollinate.”

“According to the medical texts I have studied, only queens and duchesses pollinate, dear Feuilly,” Combeferre replied. He dimpled. “Sometimes also comtesses, but only the important ones. Baronesses vary case by case.”

“Marie-Jeanne is a perfectly respectable revolutionary of the highest order, and a sublimely un-aristocratic ballet dancer.” Courfeyrac protested their slander. “She does not knit usually, but once produced for me an exquisite Phrygian cap almost entirely free of lumps and knots.”

Courfeyrac received another round of sound booing. “You tried to pass that onto me!” Grantaire said, outraged.

“And me!”

“A knitted cap is nothing _but_ knots, dear Courfeyrac.”

“And me!”

“And I kept it, in the end, did I not?” Courfeyrac defended. “You see how considerate and tender I am.”

“You thought her revolutionary society was an actual knitting circle, and tried to ask if she would make you a pair of socks,” Combeferre revealed mercilessly.

“The poem!” Joly said with desperation. “Let me continue, so that we may be free all the sooner.”

“Yes, do,” Jehan waved him on, like a languid conductor signalling a soloist.

Combeferre passed the bottles of brandy around, and each man took a fortifying swig directly from the mouth of the bottle.

Joly turned a page, and rested a hand upon Bossuet’s head. Poor Bossuet had given up, and now was sitting half reclined on the floor, smiling up dreamily at Joly and obviously not listening.

“ _Sweet maenad of madness_  
_How shalt thee educate me?_  
_Wilt thou part my limb from my body_  
_As a branch from a willow tree?_  
_Wilt thou splinter me_  
_As stone splinters flint_  
_As teeth splinters bone?_  
_Thy gruesome axe_  
_Thine awful teeth._  
_Sweet maenad of madness_  
_Wilt thou not tear into me?_ ”

Jehan hummed. “It is passionate, if pedestrian” he allowed. “I like the part with the splinters.”

“That was…interestingly morbid,” Bahorel offered. “Very visceral.”

“I am not sure if flint splintering is quite apt here. Is it not generally...flaked and knapped? Or so I have read in texts about archeology. The metaphor may require clarification,” Feuilly pointed out. “And it reads rather like…like a destruction of the masculine. Is she supposed to be symbolically castrating you?”

“No, just mauling me. She drew blood,” Courfeyrac explained plaintively. “My back looked like I had been attacked by a lioness. What nails she had. She was exceedingly cross when she heard that I tried to get rid of the cap she knitted, and I had to give almost a pound of flesh before I was admitted back into her good graces."

"It seems as if you are insulting the state of her dental health," said Bossuet, merciless.

Enjolras took up a slice of fruit tart, and sat on the floor against Grantaire’s stockinged legs. He passed the bit of pastry up to Grantaire, and licked the crumbs from his fingers silently as he listened to his friends chatter with a smile.

“This next one seems promising,” Joly announced. Prouvaire perked up. Courfeyrac beamed.

“ _Cleave into the dark of my cavern_  
_With your ray of dawning sun._  
_Pour into me softly your river of light._  
_Caress me with your lashes_  
_Like a butterfly's wings_  
_The soft feather down of your thighs_  
_Encase me in delight and ecstasy_  
_Your golden curls spill_  
_Like Apollo's rays-_ "

Joly was interrupted by a round of hooting.

"Grantaire!" Bahorel cried. "How do you find it? Is your blood up?"

"That's not the one about Enjolras!" Courfeyrac protested. "Do not twist my words so!"

Grantaire made a rude gesture at Bahorel. "I don't actually _call_ him Apollo, like a lovesick schoolgirl with a penchant for yellow haired fops. I hold the divine mysteries of our dear leader in much more awe, and dare not pinpoint which of the Olympians he may be an avatar of, for he is more than the narrow imagination of any ancient -"

"But there _is_ a poem about me?" Enjolras interrupted with an embarrassed laugh. He patted Courfeyrac on the ankle.

"The ones about you louts are at the end of the volume," Courfeyrac admitted, not having the good graces to blush. This revelation was received with clapping and cheering.

"Let's hear them then!" Grantaire called.

"It begins from number, ah, eighteen, I think. With our dear _Bald Eagle_." Courfeyrac pronounced "Bald Eagle" _en anglais_ , as if he was making some great point. At the news that they had been spared some ten entries’ worth of torture, the group heaved a silent sigh of relief.

Joly obligingly flipped to the end of the pamphlet, and continued the recitation.

"Oh Bald Eagle-" He read, stopped, laughed, continued. It was a poem entirely and bizarrely in English.

" _Oh Bald Eagle of liberty without a crown_  
_Sleek and rippling and strong of wing_  
_Raise me to heaven and never let me down_  
_Teach me to soar upon thy back ecstasying._  
_No melting mechanism of Icarus_  
_But fire in your eyes like Prometheus_  
_How boundless thy eyrie, how vast thy sky_  
_Let me lay my weary head to rest_  
_Upon the smoothness of thy downy thigh_  
_Lift my spirits with thy call_  
_That lightens the heart of men one and all_  
_Nurse me with thy milk thick and sweet_  
_From the weeping eye of-_ ”

Joly took a deep breath to compose himself, and choked out,

“ _From the weeping eye of thy third teat_.”

At the concluding line of the stanza, Bossuet let out a caw of laughter so strong that he fell over, and laid prone and shaking on the floor.

“How American of you, Courfeyrac,” said Combeferre. “Only, that avian emblem of the American democracy, are classified under _les pygargues_ , which are _les aigles de mer_ and not true eagles like our _Aigle de Meaux_ , and would you believe that the baldness attributed to it in its English appellation is perfectly equivalent to our French descriptor of _à tête blanc,_ and does not refer to the baldness of its head, crowned or uncrowned? If you are enamoured of the creatures, there is no need to look to the Americans, perhaps you may enjoy in its original French a certain text by the naturalist de Savigny on the matter of classifi-”

“Courfeyrac,” Feuilly gasped, shaking with laughter. “Say that you were not earnest. Say that you have never called any man’s prick his- his-”

Courfeyrac raised an eyebrow. “You will never know for certain,” he intoned solemnly. He was pelted with booing and jeering, amidst the irrepressible giggling. Jehan pinched off a crumb of hard cheese, and lobbed it at him in a pale yellow spray of derision that mostly landed on Grantaire and Bahorel. Would that this poet had but a head of rotted cabbage, a single too-ripe tomato.

“I- My English is questionable at best, Courfeyrac, but I don’t think the pronoun quite holds up.” said Enjolras. “I’m not sure that they still _thee-thou_ where we _tutoyer_. It is defunct, no?”

“I have changed my mind,” Grantaire said. “Please don’t read the one about Enjolras. I am not sure I could bear it. How faithless I should be counted, were my golden idol to be knocked from the pedestal of my esteem by the mere genius of Courfeyrac’s verse.”

“Read the one about Grantaire,” suggested Enjolras mercilessly. Grantaire let out a bleat of betrayal.

“Read the one about Prouvaire,” shouted Bahorel. “Poet to poet!”

“I want to hear about Feuilly!” threatened Jehan, twirling a lock of his hair.

“I should like to hear what has been written about Jolly Joly,” Feuilly deflected.

“I am not reading a poem about myself!” Joly protested. “Perhaps it is Combeferre’s turn.”

“- and in fact criticised its usage, citing the ease with which the inauspiciously named little kingbird frightens this symbol of American democracy and Republicanism, and drives it out of its territory. He remarks upon the -”

“Has he written one about himself?” demanded Grantaire. “There must be one, knowing our Courfeyrac. Perhaps upon the subject of his taste in hats? Or else the shape of his calves in a pair of pantaloons.”

“There is none,” said Courfeyrac smugly. “For is the whole volume not about the exquisite tastes of Courfeyrac, in friends with bosoms and in bosom friends?”

He was once again soundly booed.

“We are all well aware your love and affection for your friends and fellows is deep and fathomless and true, but which one of us stirs you half as passionately as your newest sword-cane? None,” declared Combeferre, having at last reached the end of his tirade on why the bald eagle was a weak metaphor for beloved Bossuet.

“Write us one about your new trousers,” Grantaire suggested.

“No, no!” Enjolras refuted. “Those shirts that he mortally offended Mlle Théophanie for, they demand an ode before all else.”

“His waistcoat! His darling new waistcoat,” sighed Bahorel ardently, like a man coveting another man’s wife. “If there was ever an item within his wardrobe that needed commemoration more, I have never seen it. What a specimen of a waistcoat! What a specimen!”

“Have you been taking notes, Monsieur Courfeyrac?” Jehan interrogated seriously, smiling. "Perhaps you are now ready to put our suggestions into practice with a new piece."

“No, no, but dearest Combeferre has,” Courfeyrac blew a kiss towards Combeferre, who made a rude gesture with a pen in his hand. He was not, in fact, taking notes upon the incisive and astute literary criticisms of Les Amis regarding the poetics and erotics of the dirty scribblings and rude limericks Courfeyrac had composed to tease Marius Pontmercy. Rather, he had been struck by a fit of inspiration, and was at that moment outlining a treatise upon the classification of sea-eagles and their close relatives.

"Why _should_ I compose another masterpiece?" Courfeyrac cried. "I have been casting my poetic pearls before you unappreciative swine all evening. It is time that Courfeyrac received a few odes from _his_ friends! Write _me_ a poem about _my_ dashing new sword cane and _my_ most capital pair of pantaloons!"

"I know," Grantaire said with sudden grinning insight. "Jolllly dear, read us one about Pontmercy!"

"Ha! You have miscalculated, Capital-R!" Courfeyrac lied back on the bed and took up a beatific expression. "I have reserved that one for his copy alone."

"He seems like a sweet enough fellow, for all that he is a Bonapartist," Feuilly noted. "Still, I'm not sure what you see in him."

"What does a man see in any of his fellows? A blazing spirit, a capacity for goodness and love, that is all." Courfeyrac sighed fondly.

Bahorel made kissy noises at him, much to the laughing delight of all assembled.

"He's not as plain as all that," Feuilly teased. "Your little Abbé is pretty enough to turn the heads of every young lady he strolls past, and half the young men too. Dowagers and widows must surely accost him in the street. Do you duel often for his honour?"

"Poor Marius doesn't stroll," Courfeyrac said. "He is much too sober. He walks from place to place, no more."

Bahorel repeated an adage about humanity, Parisians and strolling, then shook his head.

"He shall unwind in time, poor boy," Courfeyrac defended with tenderness. He twirled a lock of Feuilly's hair. "He has reacted to the tyranny of his monarchist grandfather by taking up the Bonapartism of his dear departed father, whom he idolised. I hope that he won't ever be forced into a restoration, but as our fraternity works to the establishment of a French Republic once more, I work to establish Republicanism within Marius. They are both arduous undertakings born of love."

"How romantic," sighed Grantaire, who admired the effort that Courfeyrac went to in order to love such an awkward creature.

"Oh?" Said Enjolras thoughtfully, a threat.

"How romantic that you should go to all the trouble of composing this volume, and then even seeking the help of your friends to perfect it," Grantaire corrected hastily. He had no doubt that Enjolras would leverage Grantaire's adoration to make him more useful, if he thought such a thing was possible. It was not, and Enjolras ought not to be left with any illusions to the contrary.

"My friends have done nothing except mock me cruelly and laugh at me," Courfeyrac pouted extravagantly. He starfished out upon the bed, spreading himself across Grantaire, Jehan and Bahorel, almost kicking Enjolras in the face as he did. Feuilly escaped the fate of being pinioned, but Courfeyrac cuddled his arm and vaguely petted him on the shoulders.

Entwined with many a pair of legs, Courfeyrac's ugly mustard pantaloons glowed golden in the lamplight. He leaned back into an overstuffed pillow, and failed an attempt at lounging Romantically. Perhaps it was his healthy colour and lack of consumption. Perhaps it was his irrepressible warmth and vividness, which denied him the possibility of ever being pallid or wan.

"Hmm, the Byronesque suits you ill, Courfeyrac," said Bahorel, attempting to dislodge Courfeyrac so that his manhood would not be vulnerable to any stray knees. Unfortunately, Jehan was still largely draped over him, and thus the two Romantics instead became awkwardly entangled, and Bahorel had to give up and permit himself to be used as both a chair by Prouvaire and a leg rest by Courfeyrac.

Joly, sensing that his reading was over and his crime paid for, threw himself in a hideous armchair that matched the fabrics of the bed curtains. Bossuet winced as he stubbed his toe upon someone’s discarded shoes, then settled in Joly’s lap. Joly cuddled him close, and soon enough they were whispering to each other whilst suspicious movements emanated from underneath the untucked shirt and half buttoned trousers of Bossuet. Grantaire sighed with envy. It seemed that the only ones who had really been hoping for wild sexcapades were he, Joly, and Bossuet. Courfeyrac had fallen into quiet murmurings with Jehan and Bahorel, whilst Enjolras pillowed his head upon Feuilly's calf and looked up adoringly at him from his place on the floor.

Combeferre had become wildly engaged with his scribblings. Perched on a chair slightly too low for the side table, he began to drape filled pages upon the uneven landscape of lewd objects taking up desk space.

"I need to go home and consult one of my books," he suddenly announced, standing up. Then he blinked at his assembled friends. "Oh! Nevermind. I shall go home later. Where were we?"

"We have concluded the poetry reading portion of the evening," Courfeyrac assured. "There is no other order of business, but to laze and be libertines."

Jehan made a sweet noise of displeasure. "This is as libertine as a convocation of nuns," said he, defending his reputation as a Romantic. He stretched his legs out, thin and freckled.

"You are very naked, for a nun," Feuilly teased.

"I strive to never attend a poetry reading with clothes on, even farcical ones. Especially farcical ones," Jehan explained matter-of-factly. “Besides, even nuns surely must bathe sometimes.” His shyness, it seemed, did not extend to matters of nudity. Perhaps this indifference explained at least partially why Prouvaire went about so blithely in the most hideous clothes.

"Come join us," Courfeyrac lolled upon the bed in the direction of Combeferre, and stretched an arm out towards him. Combeferre picked up a pair of full wine bottles from the side table and passed them off to an eager Grantaire and a smiling Feuilly.

"Joly, Lesgle, what are you two doing all the way out there?" Combeferre called, circling around to the far side of the bed where there was a free spot. He pulled off his handsome boots and climbed onto the bed. He pillowed himself upon Jehan's legs, which stretched out a respectable length across some portions of prime real estate. He extended an open palm, and was immediately passed a bottle to sip from. Jehan produced a sliver of apple, and pressed it to Combeferre's lips. The morsel was accepted with open lips and a quick flick of the tongue upon the fingers.

Combeferre’s enquiry received no answer for some moments, but then Bossuet said, with a strained voice, "adhering to the agenda of this symposium."

Joly laughed into his shoulder, and they ignored their friends for a few more repetitions of their furtive movements. The armchair squeaked slightly with their rhythm.

Grantaire had already given up on the matter of the proposed orgiastic activities. It seemed that Joly and Bossuet had not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)The bald eagle is a sea eagle, not technically a true eagle as such. The stuff about the kingbird came from Wikipedia so idk.  
> 2)The stuff about strolling is referring, of course, to what Vicky said about Bahorel. The Hapgood translates flâner as to saunter, but it's the verb form of the Important Concept of the flâneur. Barricadeur has a meta [here](https://barricadeur.tumblr.com/post/58182080204/bahorel-the-flaneur) about Bahorel being described with that particular verb!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we get to the orgy part of the orgyfic.

Enjolras rose and placed the empty bottle he had been nursing upon the cluttered side table. Then, curious as a cat, he padded over and peered at the pair from over the back of the armchair.

"Perhaps I ought to return the favour you did me earlier," Enjolras murmured to them. "I have been reliably informed that reciprocity is considered polite."

"I informed him of that," Courfeyrac stage-whispered proudly. "I did not expect that it would ever become practical knowledge."

"Egalité above all," Joly agreed. The rhythmic creaking paused as Enjolras circled around to the front of the arm chair. Joly scrunched up the hem of Bossuet's shirt, and Bossuet unbuttoned his trousers completely.

Enjolras smiled as he knelt in front of the armchair. "I may be unschooled," he said seriously, "but I am an eager student, and should like to attempt a more advanced lesson than the one you demonstrated for me earlier. May I?"

"But of course," Bossuet spread his legs like a buffet spreading its dishes.

"Mind your teeth," reminded Joly, who was all too conscious of Bossuet's luck.

Grantaire accidentally jammed an elbow in someone’s ribs, but he gave no apology as he sat forward upon the bed, watching. If he thought he could get away with it, he would crawl over to the armchair and kneel beside Enjolras for a better view. Grantaire was not the only one so eager - all the Amis were observing intently. Grantaire had drunken through discussions at the Musain about how virginity was a false construct created in service of feudal notions of inheritance and primogeniture, which ought to be abolished like the monarchy it supported, et cetera et cetera, but it seemed that the eroticism of the virginal still held some stock in the hearts of the Amis after all.

Enjolras reached out with his perfect slender hand, the kind of hand that ought to have studies made of them, in marble and in gold and in bronze, and grasped, with delicacy and reverence, Bossuet’s hard prick. For all that it was a perfectly mundane action - Grantaire had grasped Bossuet many a time before himself - there seemed to be a meeting of the sacred and the profane.

“I wish I were a painter,” Grantaire murmured, “just so I could capture the sight of those fingers.”

“You wretch,” Feuilly replied distractedly. “Did you throw out all your paints again?”

“No, no, I have been diligent,” Grantaire said. As a painter, he could identify that the steady glow of the quinquet lit Enjolras like a dramatic Caravaggio. As a lover, he could identify that Enjolras was much too vital to be pinned down in two dimensions.

What still portrait could capture his almost imperceptible hesitation, as his fingers met Bossuet's flesh? What gilded fresco could convey the preternatural intensity of his eyes as he studied his prize? What wretched little conglomeration of paint and varnish could imitate the soft smack of his lips, pressing a wet kiss to the shaft of Bossuet's prick?

"Oh," said Bossuet in encouragement.

Enjolras glanced up at Bossuet and Joly, then slyly back at his spectators. He pressed another smiling kiss to the lower of Bossuet's two bald heads. Intrepidly, he parted his lips, and emphasised his opening volley with a broad stroke of his tongue.

Bossuet sighed and gripped the armrest.

Becoming familiar with the lay of the land, Enjolras leaned forwards and licked down the underside of the shaft, then tongued at the testicles. His other hand rose up to cup them, like a porcelain chinoiserie bodhisattva delicately cupping a slender vial of purified water. His pale fingers glowed in contrast with the flushed ruddy red of Bossuet. He gave a few experimental strokes with his marble hand, before pausing and studying his own palm. He spat in it, and resumed his slow stroking.

"How might I keep my teeth from you?" He asked, a diligent student. He dragged his tongue firmly across the glans.

"The trick is to cushion them with your lips," answered Joly. He demonstrated the action by sucking upon one of Bossuet's long fingers.

Enjolras nodded thoughtfully, then applied the advice in practice. Bossuet reclaimed his finger, took Joly's hand, and brought it up to his lips to muffle a moan.

Grantaire crossed his legs, and tried to be silent as he gasped for air that would not enter his lungs.

With the aid of Joly's hand upon his hip, and his own superhuman strength of will, Bossuet kept totally still, and allowed himself to be used as Enjolras liked. The golden head began to rise and fall. Enjolras kept an implacable rhythm. His lips stretched around Bossuet, and became reddened. He was terribly deliberate. Each wet noise of his sucking lips and his caressing tongue was pointed and drawn out. There were no stutters, no false starts, no little awkward mishaps. He alternated between sucking Bossuet as deep as he could, and pulling off to kiss the head of his prick as if he was kissing the lips of a lover. His tongue flashed pink against the crown of the head, teasing the tense frenulum, dipped tantalisingly into the weeping eye of Bossuet's prick, and sometimes wandered away to flick at the seam of Bossuet's perineum upon Joly's helpful advice.

Emboldened by his success, he reached out a hand towards Joly, and began to stroke him as well. Two hands descended upon him. Bossuet's alighted softly upon his face, thumbing gently at his cheekbone. Joly stroked his hair, neck and shoulders with just as much tenderness.

When Enjolras pulled back and looked up for critique, Joly was sighing with pleasure, and Bossuet was panting and red from his knees all the way up to his dear bald head.

"How is that?" Enjolras asked seriously, keeping up firm strokes of his hand.

"You, Enjolras, have a gift," gasped Bossuet, winded. "I stand upon the very precipice."

"Would you like to spend in my mouth?" Enjolras asked, practical and considerate as always. He punctuated this with another few passes with his tongue. "Or is there some other way you would prefer to finish? On my face? Within me? Only teach me, I am eager to be schooled."

" _Nom de dieu_ ," muttered Bossuet with feeling. Enjolras smiled, perfectly cognisant of his power.

"Nevermind our climax, that is secondary to the key issue of education, which you know is the interest of our whole society." said Joly. "You have proven an apt pupil of fellatio. In what other ways might you be receptive to instruction, my dear fellow?"

Enjolras gave Bossuet another thoughtful stroke, then replied, "I have already been rather thoroughly prepared for it. To receive instruction, that is."

"Ah," said Joly, and shuddered as those long fingers resumed rubbing against the taut ridge of his frenulum. "Wait," he pleaded.

Enjolras paused, attentive, waiting.

"Let us relocate to your bed," suggested Bossuet. "Perhaps Joly and I can give a demonstration."

At this, Courfeyrac protested. "You insist upon being his only teachers! How churlish of you both. What happened to Egalité above all?"

This lead to a round of agreement and heckling from the onlookers

Enjolras gave Courfeyrac a sly wink that did not suit his serious face, and a soft smile that very much did.

"Shall you despoil me yourself, then, Courfeyrac?" He wanted to know.

Courfeyrac sputtered indecipherably.

Enjolras released Bossuet and stood. He leaned down to give Bossuet and Joly each a thorough and tenderly fraternal kiss on the lips, if fraternal kisses ever involved that much tongue. He turned back towards the bed and shot Courfeyrac a considering look. Then he smiled and licked up a bead of Joly's pre-ejaculate that had lingered upon his thumb. "Well?" He demanded, half-tyrannical.

"Oh good God," said Courfeyrac. "Of course yes, as if any man in this room could turn you down."

"Here," said Enjolras, picking up the jar of cream and approaching the bed. "How should I be prepared?"

"May I?" Said Combeferre. Enjolras placed the jar into Combeferre's hand, and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

Feuilly, who was the closest to Enjolras, disentangled himself and sat on the edge of the bed, and started to help with the lower buttons. His nimble fingers made quick work of the waistcoat, and immediately started on the buttons of the trousers. First went the suspender buttons, which were undone in the blink of an eye. Then, with much more ceremony, the buttons holding the narrow drop front of the trousers. When the flap descended, a tantalising peek of white shirt was revealed, but nothing in the way of flesh. Feuilly glanced up at Enjolras with a tentative smile, and received a tender nod in return. The buttons of the waistband were undone with all the anticipation of a wedding night. The trousers dropped to the floor. Enjolras stepped out of them and kicked them aside.

Feuilly now stood, and began to unknot the plain black cravat at Enjolras' throat. Enjolras was not content to be a mannequin, and attacked Feuilly's waistcoat in return. The cravat hung from the collar, undone. Feuilly tugged it away and threw it behind him, where it was caught by Grantaire.

As his throat was revealed button by undone button, Enjolras drew Feuilly into a slow, sweet kiss. He was a quick study, and Feuilly was no amateur himself. Feuilly teased out of Enjolras a series of delightful little gasps and moans with his rosy lips and careful teeth, and was compelled to give a number of his own lovely sighs and whimpers in return.

The lamplight burnished Feuilly where it illuminated Enjolras, and turned him from a sweet pallid young man into a blazing creature of red and gold. As they kissed, his strong slender fingers grasped Enjolras by the neck, gently, without threat, then slid downwards to stroke an exposed clavicle. Enjolras tugged open Feuilly's cravat and parted his collar, and broke their kiss to suck savagely upon Feuilly's neck.

"Ah, ah, Enjolras," sighed Feuilly, trembling. His arms encircled Enjolras, and he threw his head back. His bright eyes glittered out from half open eyelids. He smiled at his rapt spectators. Then Enjolras moved up and attacked his ear, and he had to clutch at Enjolras with one hand and muffle his high thin whine with the other. Having found a profound weakness, Enjolras redoubled his efforts, biting and sucking and blowing hotly into Feuilly's delicate ear.

The two seemed content to stay like that for a while, entwining, but Courfeyrac and Combeferre were impatient. They coaxed Feuilly and Enjolras onto the bed with soft touches and gentle tugs, and made them lie down at the centre of the throng. Joly and Bossuet joined the others upon the bed, and the whole congregation watched with bated breath as Enjolras untangled himself from Feuilly to discard his shirt and toss it vaguely in the direction of his other clothes. The long lines of his lean body stretched out like a prize or a Roman triumph. He was milk and honey in the lamplight, and the soft flush of pink across his marble planes made him seem like he ought to be draped in white and wreathed in flowers, like a portrait of some vain noblewoman dressed as Flora. It would not be vanity, if it was Enjolras being so lauded with paint and pigment.

Straddled beneath Enjolras, Feuilly struggled out of his own shirt. Though his cheeks were only pink, his chest and neck had flushed deep red. His shirt was gotten rid off, and Jehan Prouvaire took advantage of Enjolras being distracted in order to touch Feuilly. He began with a light stroke of his shoulder, but as Feuilly sighed and spread his arms in permission Jehan caressed the hot flushed skin of his chest, and marveled with his thumbs at the contrast of the glowing red skin with the dusky tan pink of his nipples. Feuilly pulled Jehan in for a sweet, languid kiss.

"How beautiful you are, Feuilly," Jehan murmured, combing the gleaming locks of Feuilly's hair with his fingers. Feuilly laughed softly in self deprecation, and kissed Jehan again.

"I mean it," Jehan said firmly when they parted, stroking an ink stained finger across the little red kiss marks that Enjolras had left behind. "You deserve a thousand odes. Courfeyrac's scribblings aside, you are a muse to my own poetry." He took Feuilly's hand and kissed the knuckles, then nestled the palm against his face. His lashes fluttered against the fingers as he kissed the lifeline and the wrist.

Enjolras was evidently in agreement. He leaned down and started to press kisses to the span of Feuilly's chest and torso, paying special attention to his small demure nipples. Feuilly liked it greatly, and with one hand held against Prouvaire's face and the other clutching helplessly at Enjolras, he could not muffle the sweet sounds being driven out of him.

Courfeyrac and Combeferre had been having a whispered argument, which now ceased into compact. Courfeyrac discarded his trousers, cravat, and stockings, the last remnants of his clothing, and Combeferre undressed to his shirtsleeves. Combeferre laid a gentle hand upon Enjolras, stroking down his back and dipping down to his buttocks and hip. Enjolras encouraged this with a pleased noise, not deigning to unlatch from the lovebite he was determined to leave on Feuilly's clavicle.

"By your leave, Enjolras," said Combeferre, returning with his fingers covered in perfumed cream.

Enjolras spread his legs, and clutched at Feuilly's arm with a hint of uncertainty. Feuilly kissed him in reassurance, then drew back so that Jehan Prouvaire could reinforce the point with a kiss of his own.

"Go ahead," said Enjolras. He held himself still and open, tense. His breath hitched when Combeferre applied a dollop of cream to his opening.

"Shhh," soothed Combeferre, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck. His clever surgeon's fingers did not press in straightaway, but circled their target, as if to lure Enjolras off his guard. Combeferre traced circles over the rim of the hole, drew firm back and forth strokes down the length of the perineum, and used his other hands to glide over Enjolras' back and sides. Enjolras alternated between squirming and holding himself stock still, getting used to the sensation. Eventually he relaxed into it, and reapplied himself to kissing Feuilly. He worked his way down from the chest to the abdomen, and had to stifle a small noise against the hip as Combeferre pressed a single fingertip inside. He stilled, mouthing at the jut of the hipbone for comfort, until the wandering hand of Bahorel reached past and alighted upon the ruddy leaking member laying stiff and ignored next to his face. As Bahorel had made a claim upon the shaft, Enjolras bent himself down and applied himself to the taut testicles.

While Enjolras was being worked over with Combeferre's characteristic patience and gentleness, Grantaire found himself party to the amorous attentions of Joly and Bossuet, who had recently been frustrated from their orgasms. The cream was commandeered from Courfeyrac, a phallus for Grantaire's harness chosen and retrieved by eager Bossuet, and, after some shuffling of limbs that included an accidental smack to Bossuet's jaw with the rubber member, Grantaire was on his back next to Prouvaire, Bossuet straddling him and working down his prosthetic member. Joly knelt above Grantaire with Grantaire's head between his thighs, and fed Grantaire his prick. Grantaire opened his mouth pliantly, obliging as he only ever was in bed. He thrummed with the pleasure of being well used, and took for himself the satisfaction of the stretch in his throat, the press of the base of the phallus against his mons veneris, and Joly's clever fingers pinching at his nipples. Bossuet gripped hard at Grantaire's hip bones as he bottomed out on the rubber phallus. Above Grantaire, Joly and Bossuet kissed. Grantaire could not see anything except Joly's fuzzy thighs, but he found Bossuet's cock by touch alone, and held him with the firm grip that Grantaire knew he preferred, letting him alternate between fucking up into Grantaire's hand and sinking down onto Grantaire's prick. In return, Bossuet shifted his angle, focusing less on grinding the base of the phallus down upon Grantaire and more on chasing his own pleasure. Joly's slick hand joined Grantaire's, and Bossuet began to let out rhythmic sighs.

Somewhere to the side, Feuilly gave a loud sob of pleasure. Jehan was whispering encouragements to him, and whatever pace they had settled into could be felt through the creaking of the bed. Grantaire swallowed down a gush of saliva when he heard Enjolras give a throaty, tremulous groan. Courfeyrac was letting out a string of playful nonsense that Grantaire did not have the energy to decipher, and Enjolras sounded like he was on the verge of dying more than just a little death.

Grantaire wound an arm around Joly 's thigh and gave him a few encouraging slaps on the backside, as if he were a prize stallion. The cock in Grantaire's mouth changed its angle and pace in response. No longer thrusting slowly and shallowly, keeping more or less still so that Grantaire could apply his skilled lips and tongue, Joly now deepened his thrusts and increased his pace. The head of his member rubbed against the ridges of Grantaire's soft palate and the walls of his tender throat, and did not retreat when Grantaire's gag reflex put up a token protest. A hand rubbed against his throat in encouragement, from chin down to sternum. The saliva in Grantaire's throat thickened as he gagged. As if in echo, wetness dripped out between his legs. The very blood in his veins seemed to catch fire, suffusing him with warmth from his reddening face to his tingling fingertips. The slide and drag of the prick in his mouth ached delightfully, and the battle to keep himself still and pliant and open distracted him from the gasps and sobs and moans permeating the room.

As Grantaire was being besieged on two fronts, so was Enjolras. His mouth was busy with Feuilly, having driven off Bahorel and claimed Feuilly's cock for himself to toy with. His opening was being relentlessly teased and stretched by Combeferre. He had now graduated from slim fingers to one of the phalluses of Grantaire, though poor Grantaire did not yet know it. It was made of dark, varnished wood, and glistened and gleamed with a liberal coating of the perfumed cream. A look of rapturous revelation parted his lips and stilled his body.

"Oh," said he, knees trembling. He rested his head upon Feuilly's abdomen and took a few seconds to simply be overwhelmed. "Oh," he said again. The wooden phallus was longer than Combeferre's fingers, and much more unyielding. It pushed inside and cleaved him open like a knife or a dagger. Some momentous sensation began to build within him, and he resisted it by turning back to Feuilly's prick and devouring it with all of his newly acquired skill.

Feuilly, in the meanwhile, was fighting the urge to squirm and thrash. Contained and quiet in a way that spoke of a lack of privacy in adolescence, he muffled his mouth with one hand and clutched at Bahorel with the other. Bahorel sucked at his sensitive neck and ears whilst teasing his lovely dusky nipples. Prouvaire touched Bahorel with practiced familiarity, a loose wet grip around his prick and three elegant fingers buried deep in his backside. Jehan declined the attentions of others, but by his feet on the floor was Courfeyrac, who had his face buried in Combeferre's lap.

Grantaire registered almost none of these goings-on. Joly's lovely thighs penned him in as blinders on a horse, and all he could focus on was the exquisite struggle to breathe and to keep himself open. Certainly he was aware of the cacophony of pleasure that arose from the other members of the party, but he only acknowledged it faintly beyond the roar of blood pounding in his ears. Joly's thighs tensed around his face, and the angle of his thrusts changed again. His hips drove in, slow and deep and firm. With a choked whine and a bruising grasp on Grantaire's wrist, Joly spilled himself. His seed pulsed hot and thick and salty out of his unyielding member, and was swallowed down eagerly.

Withdrawing with a gasp like a dying man, Joly collapsed to one side to catch his breath. Grantaire caught with his thumb a last drop of semen that had been smeared onto his jaw, and licked it up neatly. He looked up at Lesgle, who was riding him with enthusiasm, and smiled.

L'Aigle knew that smile, and thus knew to anticipate it when Grantaire caught him by the waist and flipped their positions upon the bed, the phallus still quite buried within him. He raised his smooth muscular thighs and wrapped his legs around Grantaire's waist, then embraced him tightly.

"Put your back into it now, _Citoyen_ ," he instructed with grinning indolence. Grantaire obliged. He liked to be obliging to his friends, when he felt like it. He planted both hands upon the bed, braced his knees firmly, and drove forwards with his whole body behind his unrelenting thrusts. Bossuet exhaled in hiccups, as if the breath had been punched out of him. He kept one hand around Grantaire's muscled shoulders, and gripped himself with the other.

"That's it," he gasped, and tugged Grantaire into a kiss. Their teeth clacked together perilously and their lips bruised with the force of Grantaire's unrelenting rhythm, but they kept kissing. When they parted, they simply panted and sighed into each other's mouths for a little while. Eventually, Bossuet's moans became louder, less restrained. His hand between their two bodies sped into a frantic rhythm, and Grantaire adjusted the pace to match. Joly returned to the fray to caress Bossuet upon his flexing thighs and to press a soft kiss upon his forehead. This proved enough to push Bossuet over the edge, and he bit down on Grantaire's shoulder with a groan as he spilled himself. Grantaire fucked him through his orgasm, not slowing until the teeth clamping down on his shoulder eased and both their bellies were slick with Bossuet's spend.

Grantaire stilled. He did not move to pull out until Lesgle finished catching his breath. Joly pulled him in for a kiss, and Bossuet repeated it in turn.

"I will perhaps take just — a minute," said Joly. "If you require other kinds of penetration." He was never good for much, after, which was why his regular bed partners learned to demand things of him before letting him have his turn. Bossuet elbowed Joly with a laugh, but was still too dazed to tease.

"I'm sure I can find a strapping young lad somewhere around here to give it to me," Grantaire observed drily. "There's no short supply of them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)Quinquet - a modified argand lamp, invented by a French dude named Quinquet.  
> 2)These dudes had SO many buttons on their trousers. ellie-valsin has a bunch of really great meta on 1820/30's clothes, including [this one](https://ellie-valsin.tumblr.com/post/115395034446/mens-fashion-ca-1830-the-bottom-layers) about the shirt/trousers/suspenders/man-corsets that has some great pics of JUST how many buttons these dudes had on their waistbands. Suspender buttons, drop front panel buttons, and buttons that actually hold the waistband closed all add up fast. Oof. Also that post has some great pictures of what Bahorel/Courfeyrac's Sexy Manx Spanx might have looked like. Grantaire's is corset mentioned earlier in this fic is somewhat different because it has some hip action, but let's just say he had an understanding corset-maker.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for PIV sex between Grantaire and Enjolras here. Also. Very brief mention of possible pregnancy from PIV sex in a discussion of, well. Abstinence from PIV sex as a form of birth control. I'm sorry. They didn't have condoms back then.
> 
> Last proper chapter! And E and R finally fuck at last! Just the epilogue left after this.  
> I have to give a nod to The Unturning by Ark. The sex scene where they quoted the Aristophanes bit about two headed four armed humans during sex was so mind-blowing that it inspired me to actually read the full text of the Symposium, so though the Plato quoting sex in that fic didn't directly inspire the Plato quoting sex here, it's definitely partly responsible for this fic's existence.

However, he did not seek it as such. Instead he situated himself next to Prouvaire, and gave him a brief kiss.

"Not in the mood, I see," Grantaire remarked. Prouvaire was half hard at best, and only touching Bahorel with friendly helpfulness.

"You know I tend to be bored by this kind of coupling," Jehan said vaguely. He gave Grantaire another kiss of reassurance. "It's nice enough to watch and to lend a hand."

"I have all your things, let me fetch something for you," Grantaire ran a solicitous hand across his shoulders. "What would you like? The scarves? The dagger? A tincture? You haven't had a chance to make use of those handcuffs we stole yet."

"Perhaps later," Jehan deflected. He pressed a kiss to Bahorel's shoulder blades, then gave the man a reassuring pat as he removed his hands and stepped back. Bahorel unbent from the altar of Feuilly's heaving chest and shot Prouvaire a look of concern.

"You occupy yourselves, I'm just going to... I need a moment to think." Prouvaire waved his hand, grimaced, and wiped it on the gaudy bedspread. He gave Bahorel, Feuilly and Grantaire a kiss each, and pushed away from the throng. He got out of bed and pulled on a crumpled shirt of uncertain ownership from the floor. Then he seized the bottle of creme de cassis and the pretentious horn cup that Combeferre had produced, and sprawled upon the armchair previously vacated by Joly and Bossuet. He seemed very much content to gaze like a spectator upon the continued proceedings. Still, there was no melancholy in his dreamy eyes, only a vague sort of distraction. Eventually, he busied himself with rifling through Combeferre's impromptu thesis about sea eagles. Joly, who had gotten his, got up and fetched the chair Combeferre had perched upon earlier, and moved it next to the armchair. They bent their heads together, those two bright-eyed and slender-fingered creatures of opposing yet similar natures, and began an involved discussion at the volume of an indistinct murmur, occasionally shooting a considering look at their comrades.

"Would you like me to finish what Prouvaire began?" Grantaire inquired, catching Bahorel in a kiss.

"Later," Bahorel said, kissing back. "Would you like something for yourself, you hideously generous creature? My mouth? My fingers? My cock?"

"Later," Grantaire echoed.

They kissed languidly, embracing. Bahorel pushed Grantaire down next to Feuilly and covered his body with his own, a heavy weight on top of Grantaire. His erection rubbed aimlessly against Grantaire's hip, but they both ignored it. Grantaire's prick made a nuisance of itself by repeatedly jabbing against Bahorel belly, and so the harness was undone and the phallus removed with a curse.

Feuilly's hand descended upon Grantaire's bicep suddenly, clawing for purchase. Grantaire pried it off and entwined his fingers with it instead. Bahorel returned his mouth to Feuilly's neck and his fingers to his nipples. Feuilly's other hand gripped Enjolras by his golden hair, and he was shuddering and thrashing into that swollen red mouth. He whined into Courfeyrac's kiss, a building whimper that climaxed with a wailing keen. His hand tightened to a death grip. Enjolras choked, but kept up his pace. Bahorel emphasized his sucking kiss with a scrape of teeth. Feuilly's hips left the bed for several insensible moments, before he collapsed, grinning.

Grantaire kissed Feuilly's knuckles, delighted. Enjolras had pulled off with a wet smack of the lips, and was smiling in satisfaction.

"God in heaven," Grantaire muttered under his breath. He suddenly ached to drive his own prick into that reddened mouth.

Bahorel plucked a nipple, and leaned in to whisper, "you should seize your chance."

Grantaire gave him a dirty look. "If it happens, it happens," he muttered, looking away and studying the ceiling.

"Oh, it is happening," Enjolras said through gritted teeth. He had gone pale and still as Courfeyrac worked slowly into him. "Grantaire and I reached an agreement, did we not?"

Grantaire swallowed down a burst of nervous laughter. "Yes," he said instead. "Yes," he repeated more confidently, and revealed conversationally, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, "I promised Enjolras could have me in the cunt."

"Grantaire," Combeferre pleaded. Courfeyrac peered at Grantaire contemplatively.

"Grantaire," Bossuet murmured, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Grantaire," Feuilly's hold on Grantaire's hand returned to a death grip.

"Grantaire," Bahorel objected, his face the very picture of concern.

Enjolras put a hand on Courfeyrac's arm, and stilled his ministrations. He knelt up on the bed, and looked down upon Grantaire, lying splayed out and lowly before him.

"What am I missing? What is the cause for such alarm here?" He pressed.

Grantaire looked away. "Euh..." he prevaricated. "Nothing much," he said, fiddling with the ugly fabric of bedspread. "Only that - only that there is perhaps one similarity we share, Enjolras, in that we both still perhaps — ah, that is to say... We both still possess virginity in some senses, but not others. Well. Actually I guess it's just me now. I never thought I'd see the day when I was even a single degree more chaste than you."

"Grantaire never lets anyone stick it in the front," Courfeyrac clarified helpfully. "Everyone knows he doesn't like it, on account of the..." Courfeyrac gestured expansively, lost for a word to describe the antagonistic relationship Grantaire had with his sex. "I didn't know that you were actually a virgin," he added to Grantaire, bright eyes boring down upon him with unspoken meaning.

Grantaire longed for a drink. Some good absinthe, perhaps, but even Mother Hucheloup's watery wine would do right now.

"I have hardly been saving myself for my marriage bed," Grantaire refuted firmly. He wanted to cross his arms, but Bahorel was still plastered to his front. "It is only..." Grantaire hesitated, then recouped. "Enjolras has — Well. Enjolras, you had the chastity of a nun. I have the chastity of a grisette. I can hardly continue living as a bachelor if I'm popping out babies"

There was an astounded silence. Grantaire flushed, blotchy red. "What is this, the Inquisition?" He snapped. He looked at Enjolras. "You don't have to if you don't want to," he added defensively. "I told you I would not press my suit where it is unwelcome."

Enjolras looked down in thought. It made him seem falsely demure. Then he raised his eyes back up and pinioned Grantaire with his gaze.

"I was wrong to ask it of you," he said levelly. "Forgive me."

"I am not- you didn't - I agreed." Grantaire ruffled his own hair in frustration. "Excuse me, my dear man," he said to Bahorel, disentangling from him and sitting up. He was determined to meet Enjolras on equal grounding.

"I'm not a schoolgirl, Enjolras. Or a blushing maiden. I want you to fuck me, everyone knows that. You know that. I've never exactly hid how I felt about you, but I also... I know what kind of a person you are, Enjolras. If you want to stick your prick in me then that would be the best sex of my life, no matter which orifice you're putting it in or whether you're actually any good. I want more than you will ever want to give me, but I won't ever ask for it. But you know that I want it, I want it all, I want more than you can give me, more than you will ever want to give me. I want you to fuck me in my cunt and to take my virginity, if you still believe in such antiquated notions. I like the idea of you having me where no one else has had me before." Grantaire blew out a breath, humiliated by his own candidness and somewhat surprised by it.

Combeferre placed a restraining hand upon Enjolras, just as another hand - Jehan, back into the fray - stopped Grantaire.

Grantaire looked away again.

"I am— aware," Enjolras said slowly, picking his words with all the deliberation of a mountaineer picking his way up a sheer cliff face. "I am aware of… some of the ways that you hold me in high regard. I don't disdain your affection, but I do disdain your cynicism, Grantaire. It frustrates me that you are a man with such blistering potential, and you spend it bleating about the futility of existence. If the actions of our society can alleviate the suffering of the common man by even a single degree, would that not be a cause worth dying for? We have overthrown the Bourbons once. It can be done again. You can parrot all the rhetorics, can spout Rousseau and Voltaire both at will. You insist on investing your time and your person with the society. Yet you believe in none of it. Why? Because of your pose as a sceptic? How can I not disdain you, in face of such spinelessness? The sum of the injustices in this world towers high enough to block out all sun, and any wilful inaction is but complicity. But I am aware of the affection that all our friends hold for you, and your bellowing voice of dissent is useful, on very rare occasions. I am only a man like any other, I despise how you place me on a pedestal. Your devotion is productive for neither my cause nor for your own benefit. What then is the point of indulging it? Still, I tolerate it, because you seem to worship me for my belief in my cause and my passion for the Republic, and surely if you can slaver over such a thing in me, you must have some space in that dessicated husk of a soul for belief and action. You know you shall never earn my esteem as a suitor, yet you refuse to be my brother in arms. Give up the petty cynicism of the modern age, Grantaire, and look to the Cynicism of Diogenes, if you must be a cynic. As for your contemptible drunkenness, Dionysus is not only the master of grapes, but also the god of liberation and truth. That is what I want from you, not the drunken raving of a soulless cynic, but the savage truth and savage justice of Bacchus Eleutherios. And you are alike to him, are you not? You know your classics better than me. Was Dionysus not raised as a maiden? I am indifferent upon the matter of your sex, but such a thing hardly matters next to the rest of what stands between us. I consented to try you because I wanted to, that was all. It is as you say, yes, I do put aside my carnal desires for the sake of my mistress, but I am not without desire. I count myself as a priest of the revolution, not a saint. As I said, I wanted to shut you up. If I am to be optimistic, I wanted to wipe that obnoxious look of longing off your face for a few seconds. I am more than your golden calf upon a pedestal, or your foppish yellow haired Apollo. I will embrace you as _Citoyen_ , and fuck you as a man. That is all.”

"My philosophy is not the gospel of Dionysus or Bacchus or Liber, but rather the wisdom of Silenus," Grantaire said slyly. "It is a better thing to never have been born, and it is a better thing to die than it is to live. I believe that as ardently as you believe in your Republic."

Enjolras blazed with fury. He raised an open hand as if to strike, but rather cupped Grantaire’s face.

"Why," Grantaire continued, rubbing his cheek invitingly against that tender palm, "I am not Dionysus, just as you are not Apollo. Wreathed in the debauchery of this evening, that divine title suits you much better than I, O Liberator. I am not a leader, I follow. Only let me be your satyr - no, no, I haven't got the prick for it. Let me be your maenad then, and if I should love you better than I love the frenzy of flesh or the rending of limbs, then let that be my own cross to bear, and drive me not from your thiasus. I have a wet hole for you to fuck, and a much more finely wrought phallus than the prosthetic of Prosymnus. You read me correctly. I do worship you for your bright flame, Enjolras. You make me want to be better. But wanting isn't the same as being, and I know what sort of creature I am. I am ugly, and could never be called a pearl or a gem, but nevertheless consider me an ornament, like the map in the backroom of the Musain, or that chair by the innermost table which is too rickety to be sat on. Surely even you have some patience for useless but sentimental trinkets, to have withstood me for so long purely on the forbearance of our friends. I can be Diogenes if you should like, only I won't live in a jar, though a wine cask would be agreeable if it were full. Shall you be Plato or Antisthenes, then? I would make a poor student of your philosophy, but I am always your dog, and eager to be repudiated harshly by your hands. I can pluck chickens or caper about with a lamp all you like. It is not so convenient for me as it is for you to simply take out your prick, but I wouldn't be opposed to pissing at the theatre or rubbing myself in public at your behest."

Enjolras ignored the restraining arm Courfeyrac had wrapped around his waist, and the placating grasp of Combeferre upon his arm.

"Open your legs," Enjolras said. He shoved Grantaire savagely down onto the bed.

Grantaire obeyed. "Shall you unman me?" He gave a smile that was all teeth.

"Be silent," said Enjolras.

Covering Grantaire's mouth with a shapely hand, he fumbled roughly between Grantaire's legs, feeling around the unfamiliar anatomy. His fingers found the wet mouth of Grantaire's cunt easily enough, but it took a moment of murmured instruction from Courfeyrac before he was correctly thumbing at the clitoris. His fingers pressed and twisted roughly inside of Grantaire, but the man himself gave no indication of pain or pleasure, only lied back with his arms stretched docilely over his head and permitted Enjolras to do as he pleased. There was a bright glee in his eyes that incensed Enjolras further.

"Did you read your Plato faithfully?" Enjolras hissed into Grantaire's ear. "Did you read Symposium as a lover, and think me your beloved? Or did you read it as farcical Alcibiades, and think me Socrates? More fool you, Grantaire."

Grantaire made an insolent noise, muffled.

"Did you think I would stay cold and frigid?" Enjolras bit out derisively, his hot wet breath puffing against Grantaire's ear. "I don't hold with the Eros of Diotima, Grantaire. Neither do I hold with the Eros of any of the Symposium."

He pressed the hot hard length of his beautifully flushed prick against the lips of Grantaire's sex and frotted against him. "Eros is not so high-minded a thing as to inspire virtue or elevate poets, and it is not so close to the sublime that a love for absolute beauty turns a lover's head like a sunflower turning to the sun. There are other kinds of love more transcendent, and Liberty is much fairer than beauty."

Grantaire gave a whine as the firm slide of Enjolras against his clitoris sent a frisson of lightning deep into his gut. Enjolras gripped him tight by the hair. He whimpered happily.

"Are you any closer to a universal truth?" Enjolras demanded. The slide of their bodies produced a myriad of lewd wet noises. "Are you closer to eternity? Do you daub wretched little pictures of me, poet? Do you stay your hand from the bottle and bite your tongue on your insincerity, when the sight of me stirs your loins?"

Grantaire hummed indistinctly into the hand muffling his mouth.

"No, you do not and you are not," Enjolras agreed, and gave a particularly hard roll of his hips. "You do not let yourself be improved by Eros. You do not let yourself be improved by anything."

Grantaire intoned an unnecessarily wounded protest at this.

Enjolras removed the hand covering his mouth, but not the one gripping his hair.

"I let myself be improved by absinthe and oysters and pains à la duchesse," Grantaire said. The smirk on his face was also evident in his voice. Enjolras pulled his head backwards and descended upon his swollen red mouth with a savage kiss.

Grantaire felt plundered. The very breath in his throat was being forcefully stolen by Enjolras. He moaned helplessly, and ground his dripping sex against Enjolras' hot length. Weakly, he raised his arms up and embraced Enjolras around his narrow shoulders.

"Eros does not give you belief, which is what you most sorely lack," Enjolras said, his words launching bodily into Grantaire with each puff of Enjolras' breath against Grantaire's lips. "I cannot give you belief. That should not be my shortcoming, but yours. Nevertheless, you make it my problem."

Enjolras looked over his shoulder at nervously hovering Courfeyrac, whose spotlight had once again been cruelly commandeered by Enjolras and Grantaire's conflict.

"Agathon," he said. "Be my lover and take me, if you will."

Courfeyrac sucked in a breath. "I'm not entirely sure you are abusing the metaphor correctly" he hedged. "Wouldn't you two like a moment alone?"

"No," said Enjolras.

"No," said Grantaire.

"Nevertheless," Courfeyrac said. "Why don't you focus on him? I shall bugger you all you like afterwards." Then, the great coward wriggled away and buried his face in Combeferre's lap again, and began to fellate him with exaggerated effort.

"Craven," murmured Feuilly with good humour. Enjolras gave him a narrow-eyed look.

"When Zeus cleaved me from you," Grantaire said, reaching a hand to rub Enjolras more firmly against himself, "he split the virtues of Republicanism as unevenly as he divided the beauty."

Enjolras bit Grantaire's lip. Grantaire bit back, whining.

"I am not your other half," Enjolras denied into Grantaire's mouth. "Only your inverse."

"Ah, but you are wrong," Grantaire smiled. A marbled hand pinched at his nipples in rebuttal. He grunted, and continued undeterred. “See, we were once one being, as Aristophanes described, not a combination of man and man, but rather an androgynous creature composed of man and woman. Only Zeus misaimed, and split us at the wrong angle. That's why you have your girlish good looks and why my sex does not match up with my spirit. What other foil of yours could provide such a perfect fit?"

"Zeus must be cruel indeed," Enjolras said dismissively, "to have given me all the spine and left you with none. Such are the whims of despots, I suppose."

"I don't need it," Grantaire said. "I depend on you to keep me upright."

"You do no such thing, and besides, I do not have time to be your philosophical nursemaid." Enjolras rolled his eyes.

"How I wish," Grantaire misquoted mockingly, "that Faith in The Inevitable Victory Of Glorious Republicanism could be infused by touch, out of the fuller into the emptier man, as water runs through wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one; if that were so, how greatly should I value the privilege of reclining at your side!"

Enjolras made a sharp noise of irritation. Reaching down, he grasped himself, and guided the tip of his member to Grantaire's slick entrance.

"I will just have to make an effort and pour it into you," said Enjolras. As he spoke, he drove forth, and plunged himself inside.

A groan ripped itself out of Grantaire's throat. Enjolras tightened his grasp on Grantaire's curls and fucked into him. It ought to have been emasculating. He ought to have felt unmanned, or violated, or humiliated. The reservations he once had for being penetrated thus failed to spring to mind. He was too used to being unmanned by Enjolras in other ways. It hardly mattered when it was Enjolras, who reduced him to dirt regularly with but a glance full of disdain and lordly pity. He was flushed and soaking wet. The hard plunge of Enjolras inside him filled him with base animal ecstasy. He groaned at each inward blow. He looked down, and let out a noise of exhilaration at the sight of their bodies joined together, dark curls mingling with blonde, flesh cleaving flesh.

"You are so pretty, even your prick is beautiful," Grantaire gasped, laughing. 

Enjolras fitted their mouths together again, swallowing the groans and grunts he forced out of Grantaire. He let go of his grip on Grantaire's scalp as he planted both elbows firmly on the bed for leverage. In answer, Grantaire slipped one hand between their bodies to rub at himself. The new position gave Enjolras a better angle, and thus the whole ugly bed frame shook in time with his rutting.

Enjolras was no longer a little cherub of roses and ivory. His face splotched red with heat and effort, his angelic curls were weighed down by sweat, and a transcendent look of supreme effort screwed his face up into something base and human. A drop of sweat fell from his wrinkled brow and landed on Grantaire's. His breath stuttered, hot and gasping and strong on Grantaire's tongue, like the wet panting maw of a lion making a covenant. He was a soldier in his death throes. He was a cherub of Ezekiel, dispensing inhuman fury. He was an animal, rutting.

Their noses bumped together on occasion. Enjolras was surprisingly throaty whenever a noise of pleasure escaped him. Grantaire supposed that he ought to be awashed with disillusionment at his beloved being made so human, so fleshly. Yet satisfaction lit his heart like a blazing fire, and electrified his every nerve. He clawed against that sweat-damp back with his blunt nails as Enjolras tore the pleasure out of him. His toes curled and his thighs clenched as the arc of his pleasure reached its zenith, and he came with a stifled shout and a brief spurt of wetness.

Enjolras did not pause, but continued his frenzied stuttering pace. Grantaire whined at the unrelenting sensation, and rocked into his rhythm. They met blow for blow, and Grantaire gave up rubbing at himself to claw at Enjolras with both hands. He hardly needed any extra stimulation. Every thrust sent another shudder of pleasure through him, and he came again soon after, crying out into Enjolras' mouth.

Enjolras was totally indifferent to Grantaire’s climax, and continued as he pleased. Eventually, his pace slowed, and he ground deep into Grantaire for a few seconds on the precipice, before snapping his hips once, twice, thrice, and spilling himself inside.

Grantaire beheld at that moment of Enjolras' climax the agonised pleasure on his face, the trembling of his thighs, and the soft whine suppressed without success. Overwhelmed with the very presence of his Orestes, Grantaire clenched down and came again, almost to the thought of Enjolras' pleasure alone.

"Well?" Enjolras demanded hoarsely, disentangling their limbs and pulling out of Grantaire. "Are you much changed?" The quirk of his eyebrow was as sardonic as Grantaire at his worst.

But Grantaire's reply was interrupted with a groan from Combeferre, who was thrusting desperately into Courfeyrac's mouth as he fixed his eyes upon the softening prick of Enjolras and the seed that tricked out of Grantaire.

"En- En- aaah," he bit off the name, and came all over Courfeyrac's face.

Enjolras gave Grantaire one last look of pity, before he turned away and focused his attention on kissing Combeferre.

Grantaire shrank back, and was received by Prouvaire with a raised eyebrow.

"Enjolras may be forgiven for his abuse of Plato on account of his indifference to all but _De Republica_ , but you! How shall you excuse your misreading of the _Symposium_?" He teased with a smile.

Grantaire bleated in confusion, still dazed. "I am not one for symposia," he said vaguely. "I defer to _Phaedrus_ over _Symposium_ , and Xenophon over Plato."

He reclined on the bed, huddled up to Prouvaire as if he was very cold, and watched as Enjolras spread his legs imperiously and compelled Courfeyrac to take him.

A cup of wine was stuffed into Grantaire's hand with solicitous sympathy by Combeferre, and a bit of pastry by Joly. Grantaire emptied the cup and ate the pastry, watching sleepily as Enjolras made true of Grantaire's predictions and exhorted each of his brothers in arms to take him in turn.

Grantaire fell into an uneasy doze somewhere between Joly bouncing Enjolras in his lap and Bahorel refusing to take Enjolras and insisting on being taken himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)Jehan only has sex at orgies when he's sad and mired in despair, so he doesn't fucking do it here. Wack. He prefers one on one incredibly freaky BDSM sex. Half that chest is his shit.  
> 2)Intoxication, drunkenness, dionysus -the explanation is a little bit longwinded but: there is a distinction made in the brick/in french between positive intoxication and negative drunkenness. see "C'est la place de l'ivresse et non de l'ivrognerie" ivresse not ivrognerie, this is the place for intoxication and not drunkenness. Also the drunk in "Orestes Fasting Pylades Drunk" is intoxication and not drunkenness - contrast with "fasting", which really is "clear headed/sober" as well as "having skipped a meal". Basically Oreste à Jeun et Pylade Ivre is more clearly translatable as "Orestes Sober and Pylades Drunk". Shout out to tenlittlebullets for talking bout this because I don't read French. Enjolras wants him drunk on the savage bacchic frenzy of revolution not drunk on wine, basically.  
> 3)Enjolras means "lover" and "beloved" as in erastes and eromenos.  
> 4)There can be no covenants between men and lions etc, the Iliad.  
> 5)De Republica, ie Plato's Republic. The joke about E only caring about the republic is obvious.  
> 6)He is lying, he rubs one out to the Aristophanes section of Symposium regularly while fantasizing about Enjolras. Phaedrus is another of Plato's Socratic dialogues, though this one uses Eros as a segue into stuff about rhetoric. Xenophon wrote a Symposium that was probably influenced by Plato's symposium, but it's more about The Lad BanterTM.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Monsieur Hugo! This fic is my present to you personally.  
> Home stretch! Thank you so much for sticking around and reading through this silly thing!  
> Warning for a bit more discussion of possible pregnancy, in the context of discussing birth control making sure said pregnancy doesn't happen.

When he awoke, it was almost dawn.

His fellows laid around him in tangles and piles, snoring contentedly. Combeferre was back at the side table, scribbling. Enjolras was nowhere to be seen.

"He's in his study," said Combeferre, not looking up. Someone had lit a small fire in the grate, so that the drunkards who had fallen asleep naked and uncovered would not catch cold.

"Thank you," Grantaire said. It took several deep breaths to gather up his courage. He was hot and sticky, and rather disgustingly covered in dried seed. The dryness in his mouth and the aching of his head was a familiar friend. He wriggled out from under a stray leg and climbed out of bed. He picked up a shirt that was probably his from the floor, but didn't bother putting it on as he exited the room.

The early morning air of autumn chilled without biting. Grantaire had not bothered with a candle, and the blue-gray shadows of the house did not stir at his passing.

Inside the study was Enjolras, washing himself in the half-dark. He had a leg propped up on a chair, and was scrubbing the semen from between his legs with the indifference of a prostitute.

"But soft!" Grantaire said in greeting. "What light through yonder window breaks? Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!"

"Be quiet, Grantaire," said Enjolras. "Our friends are sleeping."

"Ah," exclaimed Grantaire. "Shall you not wake them? Is that not your purpose, bright vanguard of the future? To open the eyes of the sleeping masses?"

"The time must be right," replied Enjolras, drily, "and no one wants to have their eyes opened to the institutional injustices of the monarchy at four in the morning."

Grantaire shrugged, smiling his most amiable smile. "And you yourself, fair sun? Up so early? Can the revolution not wait for even sleep?"

"I don't intend to get any sleep just now," Enjolras finished scrubbing between his legs and rinse off his washcloth, then poured the water in the basin out the window and into his patchy garden. "It will ruin my sleep schedule. I can rest when it is night again."

"Ah," Grantaire said softly, laughing. "How Socratic of you."

Enjolras tutted in annoyance. It was an oddly commonplace sound, to come from one such as him. He set the basin back on the stand, and poured in more water from a pitcher.

"Come here," he said, wringing out the washcloth. Grantaire went.

Enjolras smeared the cloth over his face, like a nursemaid with an unruly child, scrubbing firmly until Grantaire's face was clean and glowing faintly pink.

"Arms up," Enjolras commanded. Grantaire raised them, half in obedience, half in surrender. The washcloth scrubbed over his neck, indifferently across his chest and around his shoulders, then descended to his belly. Enjolras tutted again. He rinsed and wrung the washcloth out again.

"Up," he said, pointing at the chair. "Spread your legs."

Grantaire lowered his arms and propped one leg up on the chair.

He watched with faint disbelief as Enjolras wiped the mess from his thighs, then gently dabbed at his sex until it too was clean. Then Enjolras rose, rinsed the cloth again, and repeated his ministrations on Grantaire's back and thighs.

He circled back around, and held out an imperious palm. "Your hand," he said.

Grantaire pressed a hand into his palm, dazed. The slick oily residue of cold cream was wiped away, first from the wrist and palm, then the back of the hand and the knuckles, and then finally each individual finger.

"Now the other." Enjolras repeated the same steps upon Grantaire's other hand. Once he was finished, he turned back to the basin, and busied himself with rinsing the cloth and throwing out the water.

Grantaire studied his own hand in bewilderment. His mouth moved, but he was too afraid of breaking the spell of the moment to actually speak.

"Will you leave me no memento of my apotheosis, then?" He asked at last. "When dawn comes I shall be convinced it was all a dream, and be reduced to weeping and cursing at Morpheus for taunting me.

"You would not really like a memento," Enjolras said, draping the washcloth to dry upon the washstand. "And. You must be sure that I left nothing. I should not like to have to marry you for the sake of your reputation or some unwelcome child."

Grantaire laughed, incredulous. "You may be certain," he said sourly. "I will take the necessary precautions. Should my measures fall through, there are two medical students in the very next room who can be trusted in their discretion."

"Good," said Enjolras. "This world is no place for children."

That Enjolras had stooped to something as base as sex was already vastly unnatural. Enjolras as a father, or Enjolras married, even Enjolras in love with anything but Patria, the very idea was so abhorrent to the natural order that Grantaire felt vaguely nauseous just thinking of it. No, he had no need to fear any kind of accidental conception - any offspring of Enjolras would be closer to a demigod than a man, a little revolutionary Heracles, announced upon conception with a chorus of angels covered in cockades and wrapped in tricolour togas, beating upon the wings of Liberté and trumpeting the heralding cry of the Republic to come. 

Martyrdom would be their only legacy.

"Rest assured that you have left me nothing but a few follicles short. Why, I do not detect even the revolutionary fervour which you promised you would pour into me."

Enjolras narrowed his eyes forbiddingly.

"But Enjolras," Grantaire continued, taking one divinely sculpted hand and pressing it between his own palms in reverence. "You were wrong about one thing. I believe in more than nothing. I believe in you."

Enjolras studied him in stern, thoughtful silence.

"You do," he said, as if in sudden realisation.

"Yes" Grantaire smiled. "I believe in nothing else in this world as much as I believe in you."

Enjolras removed the hand that Grantaire grasped, and pressed it instead upon Grantaire's shoulder.

"I will not accept you as a suitor," Enjolras said. "But there shall soon be a place for you upon the barricades, if you will be my comrade and brother in arms."

"I would make a terrible soldier," answered Grantaire lightly, retaking the hand and sinking to one knee while holding it. He kissed a knuckle in lieu of a signet ring, and said, "perhaps when you are Premiere Consul you will finally accept a servant to wait on you. I would gladly bear your cup and pour your wine."

Enjolras yanked his hand back. "Villèle is gone. The fence-sitting of Martignac is no substitute for real change, but his election signals an obvious change in the favours of even the Restoration's corrupt electors. Soon, Charles too will be overthrown. You will see. There will not be four more years of ultras. The will of the people will not allow it. There will be no more cringing compromise. We will not permit another Restoration or a descent into Empire. The Republic shall rise once more. There will soon come again a day without kings or emperors. And when that day has come, I will give your suit the consideration it deserves."

Grantaire shrugged, stood, and put on his shirt.

"You misunderstand, I think." He picked up the various pieces of yesterday's outfit and gathered them into an untidy pile. "I believe in you, that is the extent of my worthiness. You prove yourself with flesh and blood, but your chaste mistress and your sacred cause demand blind faith, and that I cannot give."

Enjolras, who before had merely withdrawn into distance, now cooled into ice.

"I have the unfortunate face of Danton," said Grantaire, "but you have the unfortunate hands of Saint-Just. Your life-lines are altogether the same. I hope for the sake of your ideals that it will be by guillotine and not bayonet that you meet your end. Still, I intend to be there to witness your apotheosis. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, though I'd be useless on such a journey. That is the only vow I can give you, as a suitor -- Til death do us part."

Gathering his clothes up in his arms, Grantaire slinked out of the room with his tail between his legs. Before the door closed behind him, he heard Enjolras sigh in contempt and pity.

His fellows were still dozing upon the ridiculous bed. He thought of how the Scandinavians borrowed the French phrase of the " _ lit de parade _ " to signify not the state bed or the tester bed, but that catafalque of the  _ castrum doloris _ and the lying in state. He thought of Enjolras lying in the little narrow bunk that he had briefly glimpsed through the doorway of the study. He thought of the weapons and ammunition he knew to be in the cellar, and the bottles of nitric acid that Combeferre and Joly smuggled out of university laboratories. He thought of wretched cheap intaglios of misshapen bodies piled up on barricades, etched by talentless craftsmen who had neither the impeccable Beaux-Arts lineage of Grantaire nor the skill and finesse of Feuilly. Crude faces and blundering lines tangled densely in crowded tableaux of death that looked like Bosch reproduced by a toddler. How ugly. How crass.

Grantaire laid himself down upon the mountain of tangled bodies, and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)Romeo and Juliet, alas. It is the east, and ~~Juliet~~ Enjolras is the sun.  
> 2)This is set in 1828, so this is Charles X politics rather than Louis Philippe politics. Enjolras is right about things not being able to continue and the inevitability of revolution, which arrives in 1830, Grantaire is right about Enjolras ending up a martyr, which arrives in 1832. Danton was known for being ugly and Saint-Just died at 26, the same age as Enjolras at his death.  
> 3)Hey if I'm wrong about how the swedes use the loan word then, like. I'm sorry but it's wikipedia's fault for lying to me. Castrum Doloris is the array of stuff around a dead fancy person lying in state, a catafalque is the bier for said fancy dead person.
> 
> Hey fam soapbox end note time:  
> It's not the 19th century any more we have effective barriers. Please. Use protection. Especially at an orgy. Even if it is with your best friends.  
> You do not know how desperately I kept refreshing webpages about historical contraception and prophylactics hoping if I do it enough times vulcanised rubber will magically become contemporaneous with Les Amis. I ended up leaving out protection a)because they probably wouldn't have used it and b) the methods were gross and not that effective, but boy did it bother me. The uncomfortable discussion in the epilogue about potential pregnancy is because I just couldn't let the hideously unsafe sex they're having go unremarked upon, though obviously pregnancy is a bit more catastrophic for dudes who only have another four years to live than even a spot of syphilis.


End file.
